Since the late 1980s, Andreas Gursky has been getting further and further away from his subjects. The evolution of digital manipulation techniques has enabled the Düsseldorf-based artist to occupy an increasingly remote vantage point from which he casts a privileged gaze on the exclusive sanctuaries of a globalized lifestyle industry and other sites off-limits to the public: a Formula 1 racetrack in Bahrain; man-made archipelagoes off the coast of Dubai; North Korean propaganda spectacles. In this respect, his large-format tableaux pursue an aesthetic strategy of spectacular superficiality in

In Annika Eriksson’s recent exhibition “Wir sind wieder da” (We’re Back), a digitized 16-mm film loop showed a nocturnal scene of a group of punks casually conversing and drinking beer in a vacant lot filled with makeshift furniture: abandoned couches, wooden pallets, a grocery cart. The set is artificially lit, and puffs from an off-camera smoke machine periodically turn the image a deep blue as they waft over the scene, distorting the depth of field and conferring an oddly painterly and immobile quality upon the tableau. Projected on a large screen mounted on a metal scaffold, the film faced

This show of new work by Thomas Helbig was staged in two locations: Galerie Guido W. Baudach’s extensive exhibition hall in the Wedding district, and its recently opened cabinet-like showroom in Charlottenburg. Precisely placed in self-contained arrangements, the paintings, drawings, and reliefs (and one sculpture, in the new venue) were presented as individual pieces, but Helbig was clearly interested in creating a specific atmosphere for each location.

In Wedding, on both sides of a specially built freestanding wall in the middle of the gallery, Helbig hung painstakingly configured sequences

Danish artist Pernille Koldbech Fich continues to refine her work in the genre of photographic portraiture. She has long situated her subjects within specific surroundings, with both subject and context characterizing each other reciprocally. For the early series “Søstre” (Sisters), 2002–2003, she photographed diakonisser, or Danish ordained nurses, in their own living quarters, letting the rooms that they themselves designed serve as an expressive stage. Since then she has been emptying out her studio and stylizing her backdrops, emphasizing the pictorial space in itself as an atmospheric medium