Friday April 18th marked the opening of Night on Earth’s Berlin segment. The artists arrived to celebrate all their hard work, after a week of harried set-up.

The evening was mapped out to allow for a flow between the neighboring galleries and events, allowing visitors to take in the atmosphere, floating freely from space to space over the staggered opening times.

Gallery Showroom, showcasing work from Jesse Auersalo, Panu Puolakka, Mark Maher, Kira Gluschkoff and Rinne Niinikoski as well as a design shop with products by Company (Aamu Song and Johan Olin), opened doors at 6. Mark Maher’s card boxes and post cards for the Night on Earth event adorn the windows, but a fluctuating crowd proved as attractive a draw to passerby.

Design team Rinne Niinikoski and photographer Kira Gluschkoff have a palpable personal chemistry, the energy of which manifests itself in their joint project. This collaboration still fresh and flushed with success, they’re already throwing around ideas for the next one.

Johan Olin and Aamu Song of Company will arrive later on to man their design shop. Gallery goers were already asking about prices and trying on boots.

Kasino A4, a bi-annual Finnish magazine present in the Helsinki week festivities, previously published the prints Jesse Auersalo contributed to the exhibition.

While setting up, the preparators were surprised by the heft of Panu Puolakka’s cars. They might appear almost toy-like, but the individual pieces are cast solid and dusted with a film of white powder.

Next door to Showroom is the gallery/bar San Remo. Flamongo DJ’s, which immediately sparked the curiosity of the locals, completed the atmosphere provided by Tuomas Laitinen’s light box installation and Frida Hultcrantz’s painting.

Bar and gallery Vorspiel a few more doors down and up an alley, set up a room especially for Jani Ruscica’s and Jaakko Mattila’s video installations. It’s curtained off from the main space to allow for focus on the videos, thus making it a private experience from the rest of the bar.

Zero is the most intimate of the galleries.

The night was cool, but Jiri Geller’s Playstation control brought a lot of real heat.

The flame is only triggered by movement, which morphs the role of observer into participant, thus occasionally startling gallery-goers. Geller also has less flammable work on display, although light is still integral.

Tatu Tuominen’s paper cuts rounded out Zero.

These two artists make for a complementary pairing, as the light from Geller’s work reflects off the shiny finish of Tuominen’s.

While the unifying theme of this segment of the Night on Earth project is entitled “Physical Beats and Mental Bruises,” the art represented defies simple categorization and would require an over-generalization that would do a disservice to the work by trying to lump everything behind a single ideology.

Tags: Aamu Song, Berlin, Company, Frida Hultcrantz, Helsinki, HelsinKiss, Jaakko Mattila, Jani Ruscica, Jesse Auersalo, Jiri Geller, Johan Olin, Kira Gluschkoff, Mark Maher, Night on Earth, Panu Puolakka, Rinne Niinikoski, San Remo, Showroom Berlin, Tuomas Laitinen, Vorspiel, Zero-Gallery

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