JB.2009—#03: “The Only Way Out Is Through” (Mike Mills) at JB. Magazine

Mike Mills Exhibition. Pic © by Pool Gallery

The year started very calm and smooth. I never expected it to turn out so hectic but it’s packed with a lot of good news that also give JB. some little changes this year. Not to trigger some rumours, but something is on the way and to already realize some of the ideas soon, I would pay some good money for more useful hours added to my day. It’s already February, and the last year seems far away now. But I try to end my short round-up of 2009 quickly.

Normally I wouldn’t review art shows or galleries, but there was one spot that I constantly went that gets a gold medal. Pool Gallery, Berlin. They started the last year with that great guy, one of my favourite artists: Mike Mills. In this exhibition, Mills dealt with is own youth displaying pictures e.g. from LIFE Magazine issues of 1971. His black and white drawings about the history of bears – from California bears to German’s Bruno (remember the “Problem-Bär” in 2006?) – or “Men that My Mother Said She Was Going to Marry in Her Next Life” including Harry Dean Anderson aka McGyver have just been amazingly funny.

Other great exhibitions at Pool Gallery had been Andy Gilmore’s “Black Math”, Parra’s “I Like The Tee Shirt but I Will Get The Painting” and the photography of Harald Hauswald “Auferstanden aus Ruinen”, a photographer from the former GDR. He is known as a critical annalist of the end time of the GDR and documented that particular everyday life, which was sternly forbidden to take pictures of. The selection for Pool Gallery was stunning, very powerful pictures, it suggests itself that he was once even called the Cartier-Bresson of the GDR.