A space for the next generation
Since 2012, the EIGEN + ART Lab has been the young project space of Galerie EIGEN + ART, providing an experimental platform for contemporary art in Berlin. The Lab was originally located in the former Jewish girls’ school (Jüdische Mädchenschule). In 2015, the Lab moved to Torstraße 220, just a few minutes away from the gallery’s Berlin address at Auguststraße 26.
The young artists exhibited are not a fixed part of EIGEN + ART’s gallery program, but change annually. The Lab is interested in artists who offer a current point of view that deals with the zeitgeist and who are active in Germany as well as internationally. The EIGEN + ART Lab offers artists a space and the opportunity to realize their projects in a gallery and exhibition context in order to gain first hands-on experience with the Berlin art scene and the art market. As a flexible exhibition space that continually redefines itself, the EIGEN + ART Lab shows a wide variety of media, from expansive installations and video works to painting and sculpture to mixed media and performance.
The Lab also serves as a place for talks, workshops and events related to contemporary art. Since the beginning of the EIGEN + ART Lab, there has been an interest in entering various collaborations with artist groups, curators and cultural institutions. This included collaborations with, for example, the Maxim Gorki Theatre (First Date – Visual Arts Meets Performers), transmediale Festival, Berlin International Literature Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and its scholarship holders (EHF), Berlin Fashion Week, Berlin talk festival Good To Talk, Operndorf Afrika as well as the founding of the Artist in Residence Program of Axel Springer Plug & Play. As a result, an exciting interdisciplinary exchange can develop, bringing opportunities to work with various people in the art world.
We also introduce Lab artists to an international audience by planning and participating in pop-up exhibitions such as Ping Pong Basel, and temporary exhibitions in Cape Town – including Resilience: Pleasure and Self-Care in a Precarious World (2024), curated by Thuli Mlambo-James.
The EIGEN + ART Lab provides the young generation of artists with an experimental and open environment in which they can take risks, explore new approaches as well as test themselves and we look forward to continuing this work!