Tobias Spichtig: Pretty Fine Cat. CFA Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin

In Spichtig’s work a similar push and pull between attachment and repellence produces a certain form of iconicity, but one that does not ask for devotion. You recognise something about the pictures, and want to be in proximity to this something, congratulate yourself on how it resonates, bask in the cool, grunge speed of it. But the familiarity at play here stems not from likeness—to you, or your life—but from strangeness. What you recognise is not the content but the outline; if an experience, then of absence… It was actually Stichtig who told me what Marlene Dietrich said of how to keep an audience hooked: who is the one person everyone knows? The one who is not there. "Sing to them," she said. Dietrich and Spichtig practice seduction without betrayal. It is also iconicity without idealism, or even idology. Let me try another one: recollection without memory?

Theresa Patzschke is asking us from Berlin: How does our brain respond to art? Why do we like the music we like? Editor Theresa Patzschke, who currently lives in Berlin, is determined to discover the inner workings of the human mind. Kristian Vistrup Madsen (born 1991) is a Danish writer based in Berlin. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2016, and writes art journalism for various publications such as Artforum, Studio International, and Leap. His writing on political philosophy, post-colonialism, and the prison industrial complex has been published in academic journals in the United States and Scandinavia. Nicole Hackert and Bruno Brunnet (the founder of the gallery in 1992) are a permanent part of the international gallery world with CFA situated now at Grolmanstraße in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Their work is an inherent part of the beginning of the artistic careers of Cecily Brown, Peter Doig, Sarah Lucas, Jonathan Meese, Raymond Pettibon, TAL R, Daniel Richter, Christian Rosa, Dana Schutz, Norbert Schwontkowski, Katja Strunz, Juergen Teller, and Marianne Vitale, just to name a few.