Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff

Labzone, RDV/tutorials (studio/practice)

The Berlin-based artist duo Calla Henkel (b. 1988, US) and Max Pitegoff (b.1987, US) have worked together for over a decade, developing a practice that is embedded in the founding and running of venues as sites of social and collaborative artistic work. These have included New Theater, a storefront in Berlin-Kreuzberg where they wrote and produced plays with artists, writers and musicians between 2013 and 2015; the Volksbühne’s Grüner Salon, where they developed the performance program for the 2017/2018 season; and TV Bar, the bar, performance space and film studio they currently run in Berlin-Schöneberg.

Their expanded documentation of these spaces takes form most often through photography (but also through sculpture, installation, and narrative in the form of texts, plays, and films), and traces the economic, political, and personal rules or conditions under which shared space can exist. Their photographs often portray people obliquely or not at all, the images centred instead on the situations or infrastructures that enable exchange.

Henkel and Pitegoff have exhibited their artwork and performances in solo exhibitions at Fri Art Kunsthalle (2020), Kunstverein Hamburg (2018), Schinkel Pavillon (2016), The Whitney Museum (2015) and in group exhibitions at MAMCO (2022), Hamburger Bahnhof (2021), Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2020), Manifesta 13, Marseille (2020), Pinakothek der Moderne (2018), Museum Ludwig (2016), and the 9. Berlin Biennale (2016).