The Upcoming
  • Culture
    • Art
    • Cinema & Tv
      • Movie reviews
      • Film festivals
      • Shows
    • Food & Drinks
      • News & Features
      • Restaurant & bar reviews
      • Interviews & Recipes
    • Literature
    • Music
      • Live music
    • Theatre
  • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
  • What’s On
    • Art exhibitions
    • Theatre shows
  • Tickets
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Interviews
  • Competitions
  • Special events
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureArt

Das Institut: Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery

Das Institut: Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery | Exhibition review
3 March 2016
Lorna Cumming-Bruce
Avatar
Lorna Cumming-Bruce
3 March 2016

Exhibition and art

Lorna Cumming-Bruce

Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder - Das Institut at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery

★★★★★

Dates

3rd March 2016 - 14th May 2016

Entry

Free

Links & directions

WebsiteMap

Visit the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in the next few months and prepare to be greeted by a pair of flashing neon breasts (Breast, Röder, 2015). Das Institut has taken over this historic gallery space with a distractingly varied collection of works and artists.

This is the first major UK exhibition for artistic duo Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder. Though the New York/London-based pair practise separately they have, since 2007, been collaborating as Das Institut. This is no normal partnership – more of a mutable collective. Resisting the art market’s mania for individual branding, the pair invite others to respond to their work within the exhibition space. Thus, Solar Body Prints (2013/2014) by Röder is blanketed in a colour wash from gels stuck to the gallery skylights by Brätsch, all accompanied by the intense crescendo of Sergei Tcherepnin’s sound installation (Flame Creatures, 2015).

Despite rejecting the artist’s identity as unimportant, Das Institut’s physical presence is felt throughout, their bodies the subject of their work. In keeping with the human body theme, the viewer becomes part of the performance with continued commentary on the mind’s subliminal reaction to the artwork presented. This refreshing ambivalence toward personal status – whether as author, subject or object – comes as part of a resistance to the single narrative in general. Though commendable in theory, in practice this all becomes a bit of a muddle. Shifting between different scales and media, artists and subjects, the visitor may well leave feeling nothing more than confused.

Dismissing the celebrity of identity is all well and good. But, in partnership with rising fame – the not so secretive pseudonym of Das Institut gracing the walls of the famed Serpentine Gallery – this romantic ideal seems a little droll. Nonetheless, the playful attitude of Das Institut’s work is attractive and the message they want to spread certainly worth a listen.

★★★★★

Lorna Cumming-Bruce

Das Institut is at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery from 3rd March until 14th May 2016, for further information visit here.

Related Itemsartreview

More in Art

No Holds Barred: The Life and Art of Matthew Lanyon

James White
Read More

Shai Baitel announced as inaugural artistic director of Modern Art Museum Shanghai

The editorial unit
Read More

The National Gallery online: Lockdown’s top 20 most viewed paintings

The editorial unit
Read More

Art 2021: London’s best virtual exhibitions from home

Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

Ten artistic depictions of the Christmas story through the ages

James White
Read More

Five gifts for art lovers this Christmas

Emma-Jane Betts
Read More

Five alternative art exhibitions for Christmas 2020

Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s Adoration at the National Gallery

★★★★★
Anna Souter
Read More

Ben Uri Gallery and Museum: The evolution of a force for good

James White
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Exhibition and art

Lorna Cumming-Bruce

Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder - Das Institut at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery

★★★★★

Dates

3rd March 2016 - 14th May 2016

Entry

Free

Links & directions

WebsiteMap

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • The Girl and the Spider (Das Mädchen und die Spinne)
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Celebrate International Women’s Day with a Bombay Sapphire Cocktails & Create masterclass
    Food & Drinks
  • Kings of Leon – When You See Yourself
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Limbo
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Delectible drinks that would make the perfect Mother’s Day gift
    Food & Drinks
  • Killing Escobar
    ★★★★★
    Glasgow
  • “There really hasn’t been a film that deals with a platonic male-female relationship in this way”: Natalie Morales and Mark Duplass discuss Language Lessons
    Berlinale
  • A Brixton Tale
    ★★★★★
    Glasgow
  • Surge
    ★★★★★
    Glasgow
  • The Old Ways
    ★★★★★
    Glasgow
  • Berlinale 2021 winners: The full list
    Berlinale
  • WandaVision
    ★★★★★
    disney
  • Coming 2 America
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Kings of Leon – When You See Yourself
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • The Dissident
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Theo Randall at the InterContinental reopens on Park Lane
Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen at the Serpentine Gallery | Exhibition review