Tolia Astakhishvili's 'The First Finger (chapter II)' exhibition at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin

Tolia Astakhishvili's exhibition 'The First Finger (chapter II)' at Haus am Waldsee in Berlin runs from 23 June to 24 September. The show combines the Tbilisi-born artist's orphaned junk installations, paintings, and drawings with works by 12 other artists and writers. Among the featured artists are Judith Scott, Ser Serpas, Dylan Peirce, Alvin Baltrop, Antonin Artaud, and James Richards. The exhibition includes a darkened room installation titled 'I am the secret meat' (2022) with smeared Plexiglas windows and raw plasterboard. Ser Serpas presents an oil-on-unstretched-jute painting 'Untitled' (2022) depicting a nude torso with bloodred paint. Astakhishvili collaborated with Dylan Peirce on 'I have no constraints, the only limit is me' (2023), featuring a corrugated-metal box with an eight-channel audio installation. Other works include Alvin Baltrop's monochrome photographs of Manhattan piers from 1975–86 and Antonin Artaud's drawing 'Untitled' from 1947. The exhibition also features Astakhishvili and James Richards's collaborative video work 'I Remember (Depth of Flattened Cruelty)' (2023), a ten-minute walkthrough of the previous chapter. The show is described as creating an unsettling pseudo-dwelling space, with architecture and artwork collapsing together. The venue, a century-old villa, offers asylum to artworks across two floors but does not equate home with safety. The exhibition serves as a sequel to Astakhishvili's previous show at Bonner Kunstverein.