Visitors wishing to enter the first retrospective of the work of Ayşe Erkmen were required to pass through a security gate complete with metal detector. This initially irritating prelude is paradigmatic for the aesthetic method of Erkmen (who divides her time between Berlin and Istanbul): The checkpoint, titled Portiport, 1996/2008, resembled those found at any international airport (and, increasingly, other places as well) and announced via its light signals and alarm bells that the threshold of the institutional spaces of contemporary art had literally just been crossed. At the same time,

It has been stormy seas for the world’s stock markets, and financial giants are tumbling from their pedestals, but meanwhile, a silver metal storage building on a snowy meadow is pulsating: The metal walls puff up until they look about to burst, then the building shrinks back to its original size. Michael Sailstorfer recorded this “breathing” building with a high-speed camera. Indeed, what looks like suspiration in the artist’s film Untitled (Lohma) (all works 2008) is nothing but a loop showing the moment before the structure explodes. Sailstorfer had the edifice (which he also built) dynamited,