This was my third Gallery Weekend Berlin, and like my first, the hunt for art involves a lot of pavement pounding, and this year some bike pedaling for the cause of finding the art that will inspire, engage, and offer something that can sort of change your life. Out of the 45 or so participating galleries clustered in four neighborhoods, I made it to 22, and five of those had exhibits that were hands down outstanding. I consider that a positive result!

Even the lackluster shows inspired me, just in terms of the display of raw work ethic and bell-ringing pedigrees and impressive histories of international exhibits in galleries and museums that all the participating artists have under their belt. They have certainly put in their time. However, the ones that are doing the GREAT work not only have put in the time, they think for themselves. That, I believe. makes a big difference.

My stand out favorites were:

Peter Fischli and David Weiss at Spruth Magers Gallery. This show was right up my alley – everyday architecture and objects brought into the fine arts realm. Marcel Duchamp started this concept (right?) and decades later Andy Warhol supercharged it. Fischli/Weiss created a model of a non-descript office building, scaled to be too big to be a real architectural model and too small to be a building. Wonderful! The show also included interesting replicas of everyday objects, such as a candle, an ottoman seat cushion, and a brick – all cast out of black rubber. I thought the double-whammy was powerful – meaning the artists a) took an everyday object and imbued it with art status, and b) they used black rubber, which transliterated the objects even further. Bricks aren’t usually black and they are never made out of rubber.

Ryan Gander at Esther Schipper Gallery. This exhibit occupies a large, gym-size room, and includes a variety of objects: two large carpets, partially unrolled, with impressions of footprints, tire tracks, and dragged objects "embossed" into the carpet; stairsteps made out of white plexiglass and lit from the inside; and an accurate 3-D replica of Gauguin’s chair, as it appears in the Van Gogh painting. The chair is gray with a candle, also gray, on the seat - like in the painting. The candle lights up and extinguishes repeatedly. There is a stunning video showing tree shadows on a white building. Also there is a “gallery mouse” that has nibbled a hole in the wall. This animatronic robot mouse looks pretty real – and it speaks with the voice of what sounds to be a four year old girl. As I describe the show in this posting, it sounds goofy, I know, but it really, really worked. The piece was convincing. I should say, I was convinced. Because everything was monochrome, the show did not carry a circus atmosphere, to the contrary, it felt understated. Completely open to interpretation. Not preachy, but much more about posing questions.

Photographer Axel Hütte at Daniel Marzona. Hütte is a virtuosic photographer, who uses film, then prints BIG digital prints. The shots are scenes of water and clouds obscuring or mirroring the landscape. The effect is very engaging. The photos scramble your sense of where you the viewer stand. Are you looking up at something or are you looking down? Hard to tell – and after diving into these photos, you get so caught up in simply enjoying the adventure that the logistics take a back seat.