Walid Raad's Fragmented Installations at Galerie Thomas Schulte

Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin presents Walid Raad's solo exhibition 'Like a rubber rung on a ladder' in its Corner Space and window space. The two installations use fragmentary wall-based elements to connect interior and exterior. Raad's work often engages stories and forms from extreme violence, blending personal and collective, found and created. His long-term project The Atlas Group (1989–2004) explored car bombs in Lebanese wars, kidnapping narratives, renamed waterfalls, and bullet color coding. 'Better be watching the clouds again and again' spans two walls in the window space, featuring scattered flowers framing black-and-white figures in formal or military attire—global political and military leaders. A fictional Lebanese Army officer and botanist, Fadwa Hassoun, assigned flowers as code names to politicians. The photomontaged figures cast varied shadows, creating gaps and imaginary dimensions. In the Corner Space, 'Festival of (In)Gratitude: Love Notes' features graffiti-like handwriting in English, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, and French, referencing soldiers' graffiti on bombs. An overturned vintage Volkswagen Beetle references its Nazi production, the 'Love Bug' pop culture, and U.S. shells on Beirut in the 1980s. Raad's work folds 1983 Beirut into 2026 Beirut, Tehran, Gaza City, Tel Aviv, and the Western and Eastern Fronts.