Many international artists today live in Berlin - whether permanently or temporarily - who value the cultural climate in the city as one of the most exciting in the world today, just as much as they themselves are at the same time contributing to its form and content. The Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin installs with the first four solo exhibitions a platform to present them. The sequence gels like a dramaturgy, bringing the diversity and contrariness of Berlin's international and contemporary art into the spotlight.

The works by Simon Starling (*1967) deal with natural and cultural processes of transformation. They develop from a series of mental and practical steps that appear as an experimental set-up and at the same time have the quality of a metamorphic narrative. At the centre of Starling's exhibition in the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin are two installations that deal with the climate as a necessary prerequisite for the existence of natural or artificial systems. In one case, a southern bloom is re-planted into a Berlin winter, whereby the method of transport ensures appropriate climatic relations; in the other case, a natural system gives conditions suitable for the presentation of sensitive artifacts. When Starling tells of these kinds of permutations, he does not deliver flawless reports or dramatic descriptions. However likely his mental and material constructions may be, they remain poetically fragile allusions that are as wilful as they are aesthetically impressive.

Curator: Dr. Julian Heynen (Artistic Director K21, Düsseldorf)

Katharina Grosse's (*1961, Freiburg im Breisgau) expansive painting is born by an anarchistic impulse. They open space for manoeuvre unparalleled since the sacred paintings of the Baroque period. Canvasses and objects, entire interiors and parts of buildings become a picture room, borders are dissolved, and hierarchies remain flexible. Grosse involves her audience on a physically spiritual level in an immediate aesthetic experience that goes over and above material reality. As an illusion, the material space is eradicated by her painting. The painter thereby brings models for further discussion into play that - as she emphasizes herself - amount to the "greatest possible freedom". For the Kunsthalle a new work complex will be created.

Curator: Dr. Katja Blomberg (Artistic Director Haus am Waldsee, Berlin)

The surprising is a constituent part of the socially aware works by the artist duo Jennifer Allora (*1974, Philadelphia, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (*1971, Havana, Cuba). Their works deal with abstract spatial categories and fathom the elementary, sensory presence of sculpture between the tangible effect of the material itself and metaphorical figurativeness. Allora & Calzadilla's works often refer to a specific place, historical processes and happenings. Funny and with a playful poetry, their works elude the rules of immediate commercial viability on the art market, in order to generate emphatic pictures and codes which are at the same time deeply-rooted in people's consciousness - a balancing act between the past and the present, between compulsion, aggression and cathartic moments.

Curator: Dr. Dirk Luckow (Director Kunsthalle Kiel)