Crystal Ball Berlin – Gegenwartskunst und Performance

Make Wool not War!

Vernissage, Sat. April 18th, 2026, 6pm

open: fridays, 3 – 7 pm and by appointment

8th of May: 6pm, “The Karl Liebknecht Performance”, Lecture by Manfred Kirschner and “Revolutionaries—then and now. Loud and visible! FEMINIS-MUSS!” Lecture by BeaF.

May 17th, Finissage with “Torte und Musik”

with: Julianne Cordray, Zoe la Mar, artists of the Gretl.Wand project, Manfred Kirschner, Jürgen Rudy, Erifyli Theofilou, Chris Zschaber and others

Over the years, the Crystal Ball exhibition space has provided a venue for numerous presentations and related performances showcasing wool as a material and its low-threshold design aspects. Examples include the fashion show developed by Monika Müller Kroll, in which she sewed couture from her grandmother’s woolen works recycled from industrial threads. Or Astrid Küver’s seemingly endless series of crochet pictures, Francoise Cactus’ wonderful three-dimensional crochet portraits of famous pop stars, or Elke Graalfs’ expansive knitted paintings on the walls of the exhibition space.
Wool is an inexpensive basic material whose low-threshold, diverse design possibilities attract professionals and amateurs alike. The great wool wave may seem to be over, but political wool work nevertheless stands out as a new personal and social impulse. And documenta-participant Jürgen Rudy’s abstract, organically conceived works also hold a special place.

The concept includes the exhibition series “Gretl-Wand” (Gretl Wall), curated by Zoe la Mar over many years, which brings together works by almost 39 artists in three wool friezes and is to be reinstalled on the three walls of the exhibition space.
The tenderly political wool space is completed by the “Kunsttheorieuntersetzer” (Art Theory Kettleholder), an oversized pot holder made of wool in progress by Manfred Kirschner, which serves as a give space to groups of people, i.e., humans, and bring them together.
The Art Theory Kettleholders are a series of crocheted works whose purpose is to offer space for interpretations, meanings, and theories as an artistic ‘product’ and thus to refer to art and its social and commercial function as a “self-aware” work of art.
This constructed, colorful, pop-art “crochet room” of opinions, slogans, and calls for peace becomes a pacifist and cozy relaxation space with pillows, blankets, and books. The wool-filled space is complemented by the extraordinary, fascinating works of Jürgen Rudy, who, with uninhibited freedom, has created crocheted and knitted pictures, capes, dresses, and objects that are truly one-of-a-kind. The artist’s works emerge from his powerful intuition, which already imbues them with a diverse adaptability within the organic creative process, thus transforming them into cross-media works of art. In a video, the artist will be seen in a performance featuring his works.

Jürgen Rudy: Untitled, Foto: Tobias Hübel

However, in addition to this function as a contemplation, reading room, and safe space, the aforementioned crocheted slogans also reflect, in historical comparison, slogans from the verbal and visual contributions of the planned lectures for May 1, which we bring together in lecture performances. For example, Karl Liebknecht’s cries on Potsdamer Platz on May 1, 1916: “Down with the war!”, for which he was arrested, take on a temporal, current dimension with the threat of war and territorial appropriation in the current political world situation. The preceding quote is part of the “Karl Liebknecht Performance,” a lecture by Manfred Kirschner about that very historical demonstration and the later planned Liebknecht monument and its only realized and historically contested monument pedestal and his only realized and historically contested monument pedestal at Potsdamer Platz. Also BeaF. Will hold a lecture about FeminisMuss.

In addition to these lectures, simple readings by our readers of historical and scientific texts as well as prose are also part of our concept. The tender, political crochet room also offers books to look at and read for yourself. Electronic media are also permitted, but should not be the main focus. There is also the opportunity to actively participate in the space by crocheting, with visitors doing their own handicrafts and further developing the installation through their work. Wool and knitting and crochet needles are provided for this purpose.
Crystal Ball sees itself as a space that combines the communication and discourse of cultural history in the context of the peace and labor movements, reflects on historical scenarios of world history in their personal dimension, and creates a place of tranquility, meditation, and education to bring people together in peaceful communication and forge new connections, synergies, and perspectives.

Gretl.Wand: Künstler:innen:

@8arms2hug @amistreetart @bri_libre @caliaf_art @cherrybombs @crochetflambe @curioussleuth @ednitalandia @fasermacka @gualacrafts @fraujuleskunst @haekelbar @haitchchamp @hanikmec
@hellothemushroom @hmsartphoto @kernmyrtle @kim.laidler@la.leti__ @linlinschoen @littlenuggetworkshop @loewenzahm1luzie @maddowhousestudios @madebyelli @margaremelmonitor79 @myrjamiart @nadelhexe_sigena @naitrose @rosesagainstviolence @saramin_haekeldesign @stitch.a.smile @stricktdagegensy @tueph_li @vihiria @welshwand @yarn_vadalette @yarnagainstpatriarchy

Best before End – Manfred Kirschner

until 12th of April, 2026

opened arbitrarily and by appointment

Regenbogen, 40 x 30 cm, Acryl/ Papier auf Leinwand, 2025

“Best before End” is nearly an exhibition on its final day, consisting essentially of arbitrary views and its closing event. Manfred Kirschner presents a conceptual series of new works on canvas that combine painting and collage in a specific and minimalist way. The works also incorporate reused frame wood from a colleague, as well as secondhand paintings by other artists and amateur painters that the artist found or purchased for a small sum on Nachbarschaft.de. According to the artist, the difficulties posed by the design approaches—which stem from the sometimes clumsy creative attempts of his predecessors—yield extraordinary results through a unique challenge. Delighted by these incorporated external influences, this strategy of reuse seems extremely worthwhile, as it also establishes a sustainable practice and reinterpretation of artistic resources. Lydia Karstadt, who curated this exhibition, is therefore now also calling the Crystal Ball Gallery a “Sustainable Gallery.”

Manfred Kirschner’s current series of works explores the tension between painting and collage through a deliberately minimalist visual language. At its core is a process-oriented exploration in which gestural application of paint meets print reproductions, intertwining their visual logics.

The works address fundamental mechanisms of human perception: The sensory sense of order tends to interpret abstract color spaces as landscapes, atmospheres, or situational contexts as soon as figurative elements—people, objects, or signs—appear within them. This cognitive disposition, which is oriented toward orientation and security, forms the basis of the pictorial organization. Kirschner uses this pattern of perception as a productive source of disorientation. By deliberately juxtaposing abstract and figurative elements, he creates pictorial spaces that oscillate between legibility and ambivalence. The supposed coherence of what is seen is thereby subverted: seemingly absurd constellations take on a peculiar plausibility, while at the same time breaks and shifts remain visible.

This is exemplified in works in which an isolated vegetative detail—such as a single mushroom in the foreground—meets an apocalyptic-seeming scene structured by rough, expressive brushstrokes, in which a military vehicle appears. Random painterly arrangements thus tip into semantic legibility and are interpreted as explosions or events.

At the center lies an understanding of the image that is simultaneously constituted and destabilized within the process. Abstraction and figuration do not appear as opposites, but as states that merge into one another, operating at the boundaries of visual acceptance. In this limbo, an pictorial space unfolds that does not confirm perception, but questions it.

The works can thus be read as precise formulations within a contemporary reflection on pictorial truth: as experimental arrangements in which the conditions of seeing itself are put up for consideration.

Four Floors! Schellack Baby

Sunday, December 7, starting at 5:30 p.m.

With Gina D´Orio, Lothar Wiese, DJ MegaOhm and Lydia Karstadt

On December 7, Crystal Ball will be transformed into a unique and charming large-capacity salon disco. Various illustrious disc jockeys will use the salon, the shop window, the kitchen, and the cabinet to play special treasures, which they also know extremely well, on the turntables and gramophone. On this evening, only shellac records will be played. We look forward to a diverse historical discotheque of sound recordings. Singing along and dancing are welcome on the various floors.

Performance evening with the Zugvögel: Klappschiebetür and Evita Emersleben: Kussmundportrait- Performance

Performances on Sunday, December 14, at 7 p.m.

The Zugvögel at MP43 in Marzahn-Hellersdorf/ Photo: Carola Rümper, 2025

Zugvögel – Klappschiebetür

A manifesto for the fleetingness of the moment

Monsieur Szenario tells the story: No stage. One room. No fixed structure. Sounds, movements, light – everything is in motion. The folding sliding door is a thought. A rhythm. A question. The door rattles because it wants to fly. Migratory birds have no doors. Migratory birds are doors that fly.
One body enters, another exits. Open and closed. As if it were a pendulum between two dimensions. The door is an exile, it is the constant change between inside and outside. The door does not exist, it is the wind. The wind asks for directions. We say nothing. Migratory birds fly through the door. But there is no door. We are all the door. Freedom? What is freedom? A concept we carry within us without ever really knowing it. Why are we here? We are here because we hang in the air and bear the weight of the ground. The sliding door rattles like a heart that can beat for us. A moment that becomes too long. Will the door ever be closed? No. But isn’t the moment of rupture also a new beginning? Perhaps.
At this moment, we are all migratory birds in the uncertainty of the moment. There is no structure, no line—only movement. The door flows within us like a stream that never stops moving. The flow of the door—the flow of thoughts—the flow of life.

Evita Emersleben: Kussportrait Performance, Bremen 2025

Evita Emersleben – Kussmundportrait Performance

Evita Emersleben, who has already portrayed many Bremen artists in and with her kiss-mouth portrait performances, will portray a visitor on this evening. Using only her painted mouth, she places red-colored kisses on the paper, developing a portrait of the person from the impressions of her mouth using her amazing technique.

Manfred Kirschner: Berlin à Gogo – Prosaische Schublade, Buchpremiere

Friday, September, 19. at 6 pm, with friendly weather meeting up at Zickenplatz (if it´s raining we will be at the gallery) aftershowparty c/o Crystal Ball with DJ Kollagen

The long-awaited middle part of the graphic novel series about the artist Harald Baumeister and his friends Rita, Kurt, and Ytong takes us to Berlin and Lower Saxony. Kirschner’s third collage story is a queer science fiction art novel, garnished with architectural criticism, 1980s Berlin, and the question of how to travel through time with a snow globe. With great narrative joy, a turbulent story unfolds about loss, transformation, and the healing power of lightness.
Manfred Kirschner, aka Lydia Karstadt, creates collages, paintings, and
performances – and once again immerses us in his multi-layered world of words and images. With footnotes, the author adds another layer, connecting historical city history and popular knowledge with prose. We learn a lot about Berlin, about wild art production, about friendship, and about the healing lightness that shines through in human togetherness or unfolds in the joy of the present moment. In the book, the objects are mirrored by the events: because we all encounter each other at least twice. The first time, we may not know anything about each other, and the second time, we believe we know each other inside and out—without being able to say why.

The publication was promoted with funds from VG Bildkunst/ Neustart Kultur and the author got 2023 the scholarship; Künstlerische Recherche from Berliner Senat.

Boris Jöns – Tanz in die Meinung

Am Sonnabend, 3. Mai. Vor und in der Galerie Crystal Ball, Schönleinstr. 7, Beginn: 19:00 Uhr

Boris Jöns/ Lydia Karstadt: Tanz in die Meinung

Astonishingly fitting for this year’s already legendary Celery Weekend, Crystal Ball is presenting a special: artist Boris Jöns has discovered opinion as a sustainable resource. With his innovative reception converter, he can extract the energy potential contained in the comments and opinions of passers-by and visitors and transform it directly into sounds and music.

With the complex interactive sound performance and art action “Dance into Opinion”, the usable exhibition “Room With A Viewer” closes at the same time. Visitors can write text comments or speak important statements on current topics, with which music is generated, as in a jam session. A specially developed language model recognizes five speech acts that trigger different musical impulses. A team of opinion secretaries (Boris Jöns, Lydia Karstadt and Stefan Ruf) assists and fuels the transformation of opinions into music.

Boris Jöns’ delightfully ironic art action may seem inappropriate in the face of global crises, but it speaks of the critical relationship between individual, differentiated views in a social debate characterized by populism, in which individual opinions seem increasingly critical and worthless. This is precisely where the artist points to the energy contained within, which no longer fizzles out unused but develops into a social sculpture in the interplay of statements, a utilization, a new togetherness of the people involved.

The start of the event also marks the opening of the dance floor in the art hotel room. We are looking forward to many visitors!

Room With A Viewer – the art of a night´s stay

Crystal Ball transforms into an art hotel room

Opening on Friday, February 21, 2025 at 7 pm

February 22 until May 4, 2025

Thomas Behling – Evita Emersleben – Tornike Gognadze – Elke Graalfs – Maike Häusling – Manfred Kirschner – – Boris Jöns – Eva Kim – Abir Kobeissi – Christina Paetsch – Gabriele Regiert – Rebecca Rothenborg – Veronika Schumacher – Silke Thoss – Oliver Voigt – Barbara Wagner – Ole Wulfers

The project “Room With A Viewer – the art of a night’s stay” curated by Julia Psilitelis (Frankfurt am Main) and Lydia Karstadt (Berlin) is an experimental, yet usable exhibition presentation. Seventeen artists furnish a guest or hotel room in the gallery space, which can be booked for overnight stays. Each piece of furniture of the interior has been designed by one of the artists and completes the guest room. Many of the artworks were created especially for this project. Placed in context with each other they form a group exhibition during the gallery’s opening hours but also a room that can host a person overnight.

This twofold concept is continued in the thematic aspects of the project. On the one hand, the exhibition examines what it is like to spend the night in an art installation not unlike a sociological experiment. On the other hand, it denounces Berlin’s precarious housing shortage in a housing market dominated by the from the Senat uncontrolled rent madness of the Senate.

The project further points to the current, drastic cuts in the cultural sector by ironically demonstrating what exhibition spaces can be used for in the future and how artists can make a living according to present politics.The exhibition is open during our events and by appointment.

Enjoy a very special experience and stay overnight in the exhibition in the Crystal Ball gallery space in Berlin! You can already book an overnight stay via the gallery contact.

The proceeds of the overnight stays will benefit the gallery’s and artists’ fund.

We look forward to your request.

Overnight stay, Sun-Fri, per night 120,-€

Overnight stay, per night, Fri-Sun 150,-€

Overnight stay, with vegetarian breakfast (10 a.m. – 12 p.m.) 140,-€/ 170,-€

berlin@galeriecrystalball.de, Tel: 0049 030 600 52 828

Finissage, Concert, Performance: Ausgesprochen Blühender Blödsinn + die Zugvögel

For our first event of the new year, we have multi-instrumentalist and film composer Mareike Hube from Unordentliche Musik as our guest. She will be presenting her music project “Ausgesprochen Blühender Blödsinn”. The band has a special, original sound that creates a kind of post-modern Krautrock, especially through concise minimalism, a cello and exceptional percussion instruments such as thunder with concise lyrics. In addition, the improv performance group Zugvögel will perform and use the materials of the multi-layered installation “Good News” by Elke Graalfs to bring them to life. The Zuvögel performances, which will also take place unexpectedly in public spaces, will be developed live and directly on site. The acts will be accompanied by DJ Lobotomy, who will also be playing and singing with a cellist and Mareike Hube in ABB. As a bonus, there will be a surprise from Mireille& Matthieu. All this at the end of the installation by Elke Graalfs.

Elke Graalfs – Good News

30 Schichten Unlust zur Erbauung

Vernissage, December 7th, at 7 pm

until January, 12th, 2025

open; fridays 2 to 7pm & after appointment

Elke Graalfs, 30 Schichten Unlust zur Erbauung, 2024, Photos by Jutta Lilienfein

In her exhibition at the Crystal Ball, Elke Graalfs is showing an installative project idea that has developed from her work form and which she has long wanted to realize in the exhibition space. The artist’s works move and combine photography and painting in collages and expansive installations.

For “Good News – 30 Schichten Unlust zur Erbauung”, Graalfs has developed an installation that is similar to her studio situation, focusing on the processual nature of her working strategy and the secondary paths that accompany it. The artist lines the walls of her studio with white paper, as she very often paints her motifs on paper in order to cut them out later and use them for installations. This is very similar to her collage work, which she also continues on the pages of printed books and magazines. In the studio, however, painting is always accompanied by commenting on and implementing other ideas in the margins or on the sides of the large pieces of paper as she works. If motifs are later cut out and new papers are stapled over them, layers also open up in the room, like in a book. Formulated thoughts, political commentaries and drawings emerge like an inner dialog that also packs drafts, incidentals and relations of concepts into speech bubbles and images on the sheets of paper. We see the creative process with its accompanying inner actions, mirroring the artist’s thoughts and feelings. In the exhibition, the artist will show this experiment, creating an almost holistic, structuralist concept in which not only the finished work, but also the path to it, with its difficulties, distractions, side paths and pauses, is of interest. Yes, the pause itself, the not doing, not painting or doing something else that nevertheless leads to the work, can become the subject of a playful investigation. But it can also open up a personal, sensitive context. In Graalf’s installation, she shows the work as if in a book, thus opening up her works to further relationships that surround the artwork like speaking layers and locate it in a sphere of creation, as if it had only just been completed the moment we look at it. This can be found as a recurring motif in Elke Graalf’s works, that she transforms creative, mental processes into spatial adaptations and thus into installations that are as suitable as they are impressive.

Fotos: Michael Jungblut

Matchbox – NIZA Collective

Work in Progress from 20. bis 29. November

Opening Saturday, 30th November at 7pm, Sunday, December 1st, open 2- 7pm

Oliver Zabel, Java, 15 x 7 x 2,5 cm, Mixed Media, 2023

In November, the NIZA collective will visit us and create a wall-sized work for “Matchbox” in the gallery within just one week. As in the group’s previous works, in which murals were realized in public spaces in Bremen, Polleur in Belgium, Schildow in Brandenburg, Bornholm and Berlin, a large mural will be painted based on a miniature template. It is therefore also possible to visit the artists at work, similar to what happens “outside” by chance. The small miniature that is the model for “Matchbox” was created by artist Oliver Zabel. Using old matchboxes, Zabel stages object collages whose playful scenes develop surprising changes of meaning in relation to their small, rare lithographs. The artists Daniela and Malte Nickau work together with Oliver on the NIZA concept, on large reproductions of the boxes, which also charmingly focuses on enlargements of small inaccuracies and creates a virtuoso painted blow-up of object art.

“Matchbox” also shows miniatures that have already been realized in public space as part of a series.