Logo Raab Galerie Berlin

Raab Galerie Berlin

Goethestraße 81
D-10623 Berlin

opening hours:

Tue-Fr 10-18:30
Sa 10-16

☎: ++49 +30 261 92 18
✉: mail@raab-galerie.de

The RAAB gallery

RAAB gallery Berlin

Raab Gallery was founded in former West-Berlin in 1978. For 23 years working in a Bauhaus building at Potsdamer Brücke with five meter high walls, it soon became famous for showing huge works by young Berlin artists like Elvira Bach, Rainer Fetting, Markus Lüpertz and K.h Hödicke. At the time it as well proofed to be a meeting point for emerging internantional artists such as Enzo Cucchi and Ernesto Tatafiore from Italy, Michel Alberola and Gerard Garouste from France, Donald Sultan and Chuck Close from the United States or Christopher le Brun from Great Britian, to name a few. After the wall went down Raab Galerie extended its Portfolio with an Artist from east germany: Hubertus Giebe, former master student of Bernard Heisig and lecturer at Kunstakademie Dresden. Street Art became an important issue for the last ten years, starting with by now internationaly well known berlin based Artist EL Bocho. While artists like Harald Klemm and Thomas Baumgärtel from Cologne close a gap between classical forms of artistic representation and new techniques with their stencil sprayed cavases, Raab Galerie also shows SKENAR73, a true graffiti writer. Since the gallery always strives to encurage new tendencies, plenty of group exhibitions have shown that street art and graffiti found their well deserved place in the canon of high quality contemporary art. Raab Gallery remains young and international to the day, with artists from Austria like Nina Maron and the sculpturer Martin Krammer as well as the next generation of Pop Artists such as Nuno Raminhos (Portugal), Ewen Gur (France) or Phillip Wolf (Spain). These western artists get complimented by South Korean Seoul based star artist Mari Kim, who shows that east asian art means in no way an opposition to western aesthetics but rather inspirational exchange.


current exibition:  Thomas Baumgärtel und Otto Alexander Jahrreiss Plakat (16.03.24 - 17.04.24)

Thomas Baumgärtel und Otto Alexander Jahrreiss Plakat



more than 400 years ago the word PLAKAT -poster is born in the Netherlands. During a war of liberation that lasted more than eighty years, one of the means of communication was to glue printed leaflets to their houses' walls. Since than there have been many useful applications to the medium in public notices and advertisement. Among the most beautiful species are posters for museums exhibitions, inviting us to visit very special shows. Today however, posters in our cities yield more and more to digital formats.

This is where Thomas Baumgärtel and Otto Alexander Jahrreiss intervene, each of them in a very special way. Both are interested in these products of the street, especially what remains after exposure to wind and storm. While the artworks of both artists could not be more different.



This is where Thomas Baumgärtel and Otto Alexander Jahrreiss intervene, each of them in a very special way. Both are interested in these products of the street, especially what remains after exposure to wind and storm. While the artworks of both artists could not be more different.


Otto Alexander Jahrreiss loves a formative coincidence, recollecting images from various posters that he finds in the South of Italy. With a trained eye the fotografer, director, author, advertising and theater artist is looking for a spark of eternity in the transitory posters, making collages of a part of a Botticelli Venus here  and a Medici beauty there, decollaging other parts and thus creating unlimited options for his ideas. The use of parts of old posters makes us regret that the image is destoryed, while at the same time there is a distinct fascination that is caused by the reborn composition. It is the ideal playground for an artist like Jahrreiss, who's mind is used to constantly travel between the speed of a film and the firm image of a foto.


He wants to find those images of today's life that are stable and will not look outdated when you look at them a later moment. At the same time it seems to be fascinating to apply these thoughts to works of decay like posters, to create a piece of art out of many damaged throw away articles. Its background, coulours, forms invite the eye to make new discoveries. Once in a lecture at the Berlin Academy of Arts Georg Baselitz expressed the desire to be the artist with the longer arm who could paint behind the artwork. Some of these vanished images have now reappeared in a new shape and Jahreiss invites us to  think about various possibilities to rediscover which memories they excite.



The foundation of Thomas Baumgärtel's posters are layers of posters that had been glued to brick walls many years ago. These he turns around so that the brick structure is still visible and covers the surface with a hibernal light blue colour, to give it another chance with different motives. There seems to be a certain scepticism over the fact that this work is build upon fragile grounds. It is not only the material that is under observation, but as well the motive. Here Baumgärtel chooses for example Piet Modrian and Fernand Léger as example, reminiscent of times in in the abyss when new ideas could have changed the world aesthetically to a great planet. To think about Mondrian and Léger today is a wonderful aesthetical enrichment.


It is not the only way to prove how to avoid decay. Baumgärtel chooses all  kind of material to paint and spray on. While thinking about the way of working of his predecessors, he applies new ways of painting and contemporary ideas to existing motives. This does not stop with modern masters, but is applied by the Cologne artist to his Düsseldorf predessors Beuys, Richter, Ueckers. The competition between the cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf thus becomes very relaxed. And to him it is fun to incorporate a lot of comic figures into the art, inviting them to join the company.


We find continuity in visual art and are looking to provide a basis for contemporary art. While there is no safe ground, art constantly has to prove its own value as a safe harbour in stormy weather. Than the task of each new generation is enlightening and should be protected from generation to generation. Thomas Baumgärtel and Otto Alexander Jahrreiss are contributing to make the best aesthetical solutions a pleasing part of our lives.










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