DIS Will Curate 2016 Berlin Biennale

DIS Photo: Sabine Reitmaier via Biennale Foundation

New York-based art collective DIS will curate the ninth Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art announced on Wednesday. The collective—Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, and David Toro—is best known for their publication DIS Magazine and numerous site-specific installations and interventions.

Most recently, they took over New York’s Red Bull Studios for DISown, a retail pop-up designed by Lizzie Fitch, which served up 30 artists’ takes on everyday products and dressed down consumerism to great acclaim. They contributed a work, ProBio, to MoMA PS1’s summer 2013 show, “EXPO 1: New York”. And they run a photo agency, DISimages, which lets artists retool the tired tropes of stock photography.

DIS follows 2014 Berlin Biennale curator Juan Gaitán and represents another stark shift in tone for the exhibition, which Klaus Biesenbach, Nancy Spector, and Hans Ulrich Obrist first curated in 1998 (see “Berlin Biennale Presents an Art World Spread Too Thin“).

Given their internet-centric aesthetic, one would expect the biennial to take a strong tack towards post-internet art. That’s an exciting prospect for a biennial that hasn’t had a widely-celebrated edition since Documenta 14 curator Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filipovic’s outing in 2008.

DIS was chosen by an international jury consisting of Goldsmiths’ Elvira Dyangani Ose, independent curator Fulya Erdemci, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt director Susanne Gaensheimer, Public Art Agency’s Edi Muka, CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art Bordeaux director María Inés Rodríguez, Hammer Museum and fourth Berlin Biennale curator Ali Subotnick, and Ullens Center director Philip Tinari. The ninth Berlin Biennale will take place in early-summer 2016.


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