rear window

When we look at a work of art, we see a fictional space in which different times assert their presence simultaneously. Memory is constantly reshaping itself, telling and reinventing itself, and in this process of becoming, it is not easy to separate perception from misperception.

The positions in REAR WINDOW refer to memories, to the supposedly familiar, which is updated in echoes and revaluations. In the tension between loss and understanding, the works allow a new present to emerge, one that always bears witness to its own transience.


The exhibition brings together drawing, painting, video and sculpture. The biographies of the participating artists are as diverse as the media they work with: born between 1954 and 1990, they belong to very different generations, come from Switzerland, Hungary, Germany and Ukraine, and currently live in Zurich, Berlin, Kassel and Biel.


About the host institution, Projektraum des VdBK 1867 e.V.:

The VdBK 1867 e.V. looks back on an impressive history as a cultural and political initiative of intellectual women; Paula Modersohn-Becker and Käthe Kollwitz, for example, studied at the VdBK art school. Since 1990, the association has organised the prestigious Marianne Werefkin Prize. Its project space primarily shows contemporary art and occasionally historical positions.


About the curators:

CAPRI Berlin stands for the curatorial projects of artists Bettina Carl (Zurich+Berlin) and Ina Bierstedt (Berlin) and emerged from the initiative of the same name, which ran a non-commercial art space in Berlin-Mitte from 2001 to 2006. On a voluntary basis, Bettina Carl, Ina Bierstedt and Alena Meier curated over 70 exhibitions there, including international collaborations. Since 2009, Bettina Carl and Ina Bierstedt have conceived exhibitions as guest curators at FUTURA Prague, Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien Berlin and the municipal art gallery D.U.M. Brno CZ, among others. In Switzerland, Bettina Carl was co-curator at White Space Zurich from 2007 to 2009, and in 2015 she conceived and realised ‘Centre Parting’ at Kasko Basel, as well as ‘Gegen Weiß’ / ‘Re: Gegen Weiß’ in Zurich and in Glückstadt near Hamburg in 2016. Ina Bierstedt curated the international group exhibition ‘Uncertain Domesticities’ at the municipal art gallery Dum Umeni Mesta Brno, CZ, in 2025.


As in Alfred Hitchcock's films, the window to the courtyard is the one from which we secretly observe others while believing ourselves to be invisible. It reveals something of the inner life of the house and sometimes also exposes less presentable aspects of its inhabitants. Down in the courtyard, it is cool and dark; our gaze falls on junk, leaves and rubbish bins.
There is also a rear window in the car. The section of the rear window frames a piece of the world: the present, which is inexorably becoming the past. The film running on the screen in the rear window is also part of this world.

There is also a rear window in the car. The rear windscreen frames a piece of the world: the present, which is inexorably becoming the past. The film playing on the
screen in the rear window is no longer part of our present, but shows us what and where we were just a moment ago.

When we look at a work of art, we see a fictional space in which different times assert their presence simultaneously. An image emerges before us that brings to mind more than what is immediately visible: the reflection of other forms and interpretations that we allow to pass over the object at the moment of viewing.

Our gaze brings in other images that claim space as imperceptibly as they do naturally, like a projector that intrudes into the scene from behind through a rear window, imposing its colours, sounds and meanings on it.



Opening hours: Thursday to Saturday, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Berlin Art Week: extended opening hours www.vdbk1867.de