Julie Mehretu's 'Grey Area' at the Guggenheim Explores Urban Metamorphosis

Julie Mehretu's exhibition 'Grey Area' was held at the Musée Guggenheim in New York from May 14 to October 6, 2010. The series of paintings, commissioned by Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, captures the energy of Berlin's transformation since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. While only 'Berliner Plätze' directly references Berlin, the works broadly examine the modern city as a Darwinian entity shaped by natural and supernatural forces. Mehretu's epic canvases feature architectural fragments, abstract lines, and staccato marks suggesting insect swarms or debris from explosions. 'Berliner Plätze' layers 19th-century building drawings into an abstract grid, while 'Believer's Palace' references Baghdad's destruction in the Iraq War, incorporating details from the World Trade Center and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The exhibition was reviewed by Eleanor Heartney.