Berghain nightlife figure Sven Marquardt and the NYC-based underground promoter Teksupport are partnering up for DISTURBING BEAUTY, a New York Art Week photo exhibition at ArtsDistrict Brooklyn.
The collection will showcase the Berlin-based photographer’s first photo works captured in 1980s East Berlin and it is presented by Galerie Deschler.
Marquardt first began photographing in East Berlin in the early eighties before taking a brief break after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He then worked as a doorman at the legendary Ostgut club and became a nightlife icon as a bouncer at Berghain after it opened in 2004.
To this day, he remains the driving force behind the visual aspect of Berghain’s OstGut Ton record label and is a legend in the German techno scene.
Speaking about the exhibition, Marquardt said, “For more than thirty years, club culture has determined both my life—as a curator of countless nights—and, of course, my life as a photographer.”
He continued, “In a city in transition after the wild eighties and the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had for the first time put my camera aside. It was at the end of the 1990s that my camera again became a stylistic device for expressing our attitude towards life. Berlin has always been the setting as well as the inspiration for my pictures and projects.”
The opening event on May 18 will see performances from a host of noteworthy house and techno artists, staged by Teksupport. This includes an afterparty featuring a four-hour set by Joris Voorn with support from Akua.
The DISTURBING BEAUTY exhibition will be on view from May 18- 21 from at the Gallery at ArtsDistrict Brooklyn. Admission is free.
Grab tickets to Sven Marquardt’s DISTURBING BEAUTY opening event afterparty on May 18 here.
Featured image from Berta Fernandez Noguerol, Visual Art by Tavy Hornbrook, Photo Credit Vitali Gelwich