David Bowie

Berlin

From 20 May to 10 August 2014 Berlin-based Martin-Gropius-Bau presents David Bowie. The V&A’s Theatre and Performance curators, Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh, have had unprecedented access to the David Bowie Archive. The result is a traveling exhibition (it was shown in London last year) exploring the creative processes of Bowie as a musical innovator and cultural icon, tracing his shifting style and sustained reinvention across five decades.

The Berlin stop is one of the highlights of the international exhibition tour due to the intimate relationship between Bowie and the German capital. The exhibition sends the visitors on a time journey through the subculture of West Berlin during the 1970s, the time when Bowie and dazzling companions such as Iggy Pop influenced the Berlin nightlife.

The Berlin years 1976/78 were some of the most productive years of Bowie’s career; it was then when he wrote music history. He drew creative energy from the city and created a triptych of groundbreaking albums: Low, Lodger and the centrepiece Heroes. It was recorded within sight of the Berlin Wall at Hansa Studios. Here, he and his companions experimented with avantgardistic concepts of their personalities breaking boundaries between fashion, music and performance art – life and art merged to something radically new.

The exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau shows those intensive relationships and presents objects which have been gathered up especially for the Berlin stop of the tour.

Photo collage from „The Man Who Fell to Earth“, 1975-1976 (Film stills: David James, Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive, Film stills: © STUDIOCANAL Films Ltd, Abbildung: © Victoria and Albert Museum)

David Bowie on the album cover of „Aladdin Sane“, 1973 (Photo: Brian Duffy, Photo Duffy, © Duffy Archive & The David Bowie Archive)

David Bowie

Martin-Gropius-Bau

May 20 – August 10, 2014
Niederkirchnerstraße 7
10963 Berlin
Germany

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