The Berlin gallery Wentrup has announced it will expand to an additional, second space in the city’s Tiergarten gallery district, at Potsdamer Straße, which will be named WNTRP.
The opening of the new space is slated for September 16, to coincide with Berlin Art Week. A mission statement revealed that the independent extension of Wentrup will host “performative interventions,” and a “public discussions program,” and will “realize experimental works” which will “foster exchanges between artists and curators.”
In an email to artnet News, dealer Jan Wentrup—who owns the gallery with his wife Tina—wrote, “This follows an idea of growth not only expressed physically, but intellectually too.” He added that, “We will show much more experimental exhibitions and want to establish a discursive platform.”
The development also includes a restaurant, retail spaces, and offices. Photo: Courtesy Neue West.
Wentrup added that the new space will be under the directorship of his wife Tina. With a background in theater and dance she aims to approach the new gallery’s program from a performative perspective and visitors can expect a program with a stronger non object-related emphasis than the gallery’s primary space.
The intimate new gallery is located in a subterranean space in the courtyard of a new development at Potsdamer Straße which also includes offices, retail spaces, and a restaurant owned by restaurateur Ludwig Cramer-Klett, who enjoys ties to the local art scene, and who also owns the popular art crowd hangout Katz Orange in Berlin’s Mitte district.
For its inaugural exhibition, WNTRP will show a solo exhibition by the Moroccan conceptual artist Hicham Berrada who will present a new video work recreating the biological phenomenon of inflorescence. Using a high-speed camera, Berrada captured the process otherwise imperceptible to the human eye.
The exterior of the development within which WNTRP will be located. Photo: Courtesy Neue West.
The announcement of the expansion comes amid a string of closures in the German capital, with Berlin-based dealers taking their galleries elsewhere: VeneKlasen/Werner have closed their Berlin showroom, Galerie Gebrüder Lehmann will focus on its Dresden space, Croy Nielsen have moved to Vienna, and Galerie Zink, to a town near Nuremberg.
Wentrup’s expansion however indicates that the art scene in Berlin is still developing.
“Hicham Berrada: Fleur” runs from September 16 – October 30, 2016 at WNTRP, Berlin.