Artist Jonathan Berger's work centers on the practice of exhibition making, encompassing a spectrum of activity including sculpture, installation, performance, archival work, design, education, and the production of large-scale collaborative projects. The content of his exhibitions range from work that he physically produces or asks others to produce for him, to materials that he collects, seeks out, and re-contextualizes, or that are the product of conversations and exchanges with others. Berger's relationship to these exhibitions exists in a gray area that both incorporates and rejects the standard conventions attached to the role of artist, curator, producer, archivist, and historian. In his presentation he will focus on the ways in which the exhibition site can be repurposed, specifically highlighting work with artist archives and collaborative projects involving the popular and the obscure, the static display and the event, that which is widely acknowledged as art and that which is not.
Jonathan Berger recently completed a three-year term as director at 80 WSE Gallery, New York. Recent projects include: Ellen Cantor: Are You Ready For Love?; The Magic Flute, in collaboration with Vaginal Davis, Susanne Sachsse, Xiu Xiu, Jesse Bransford, Jackie Shemesh, and Michel Auder; James Son Ford Thomas: The Devil and His Blues, in collaboration with Jessica Garcia and Marybeth Brown; New Sights, New Noise, in collaboration with Michael Stipe; Devotion: Excavating Bob Mizer, in collaboration with Billy Miller; and Learn to Read Art: A Surviving History of Printed Matter, in collaboration with Max Schumann, all of which were presented at 80 WSE Gallery. In 2013, he presented On Creating Reality, by Andy Kaufman at Maccarone, New York, in addition to organizing Andy Kaufman's 99cent Tour, the first comprehensive screening series surveying Kaufman's performance work, presented at Participant Inc., New York. In 2009, Berger organized the exhibition Stuart Sherman: Nothing Up My Sleeve at Participant, Inc., which was included in the 2009 PERFORMA Biennial. Berger has presented solo installation projects at the Busan Biennial, South Korea; Frieze Projects, London; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Adams and Ollman Gallery, Portland, Oregon, Andreas Grimm Gallery and Karma Gallery, New York. Recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Haven Foundation Grant, Berger received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2002 and his MFA from New York University in 2006, where he is presently a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art Professions.
Eine Kooperation des Masterstudiengangs Curatorial Studies und dem Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft, Goethe Universität Frankfurt.
Today
Ongoing
Summer Term Break 2023
Information, 17 July – 13 October 2023
Winter Semester 2023/24
Information, 16 October 2023 – 9 February 2024
GROTTO – Graduate Show 2023
Exhibition, 14 – 30 July 2023
Hoor Al Qasimi: Sharjah Biennial 15. Thinking Historically in the Present
Lecture, 4 July 2023, 19:00
Manthia Diawara & Monika Szewczyk: AI: African Intelligence
Screening, 28 June 2023, 20:15
Lynn Rother: Uncanny provenance. Art history and its double
Lecture, 27 June 2023, 19:00
Slavs and Tatars: The Transliterative Tease
Lecture, 20 June 2023
Amt 45 i: Talks
Symposium, 17 June 2023, 14:00–20:30
another night in daimler
Konzert, 16 June 2023, 20:00
Jacqui Davies: Playing with Fire or the perils of working at the intersection of art and film
Lecture, 13 June 2023, 19:00
Willem de Rooij: King Vulture
Lecture, 6 June 2023, 19:00
Vittoria Martini & Thomas Hirschhorn: The Ambassador’s Diary
Talk, 1 June 2023
Tarek Lakhrissi: Beastangel
Lecture, 16 May 2023
Éric Baudelaire: When There is No More Music to Write (Lecture)
Lecture, 9 May 2023
Éric Baudelaire: When There is No More Music to Write (Screening)
Screening, 8 May 2023
Lectures Summer Semester 2023
Lecture, 2 May – 7 July 2023
Grada Kilomba: A conversation about the 35th Bienal de São Paulo
Lecture, 2 May 2023, 19:00
Summer Semester 2023
Information, 11 April – 14 July 2023
Admission Period for Full-time Studies in Fine Arts 2023/24
Information, 1 – 30 April 2023
Lap-See Lam "Tales of the Altersea" at Portikus
Exhibition, 11 March – 28 May 2023
Peter Weibel (1944–2023)
Information, 1 – 15 March 2023
Winter Term Break 2022/23
Information, 13 February – 10 April 2023
The Mensa is taking a break!
Information, 13 – 20 February 2023
Rundgang 2023
Exhibition, 10 – 12 February 2023, 10:00–20:00
Water Cooler Talks 2023
Lecture, 10 – 12 February 2023
Rundgang Film Program at DFF
Exhibition, 10 – 12 February 2023
Rundgang Party 2023
Party, 10 February 2023, 23:00
Rundgang Awards 2023
Information, 10 – 24 February 2023
On the Benefits of Friendship—A symposium in honor of Prof. Dr. Isabelle Graw
Symposium, 27 January 2023, 14:00–18:00
Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw: city limits
Lecture, 24 January 2023, 19:00
Christina Li: Time, dispossessed
Lecture, 17 January 2023, 19:00

Jonathan Berger: Archive as Biography: Artists Experiments in Exhibiting Material Culture
Lecture 16 November 2016, 19:00 Aula, Städelschule, Dürerstraße 10, 60596 Frankfurt am Main