About
KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art occupies a former brewery complex in the Rollbergkiez neighbourhood of Neukölln, and stands as one of Berlin's distinctive examples of industrial heritage repurposed for contemporary artistic production. The site was built between 1926 and 1930 to designs by architects Hans Claus and Richard Schepke in an Expressionist idiom, with its striking Sudhaus, originally home to six giant copper brewing vats once the largest of their kind in Europe, known in its day as the Palace of Berlin Beer Culture. Partially destroyed in the Second World War, the building was rebuilt in the early 1950s by cinema architect Gerhard Fritsche, who also designed Berlin's Zoo Palast. The transformation of this now protected historical monument into a centre for contemporary art was the vision of Salome Grisard and Burkhard Varnholt, who acquired the complex in 2011 and oversaw its careful, historically sensitive renovation.
KINDL opened to the public in 2016 and has since presented temporary exhibitions of international contemporary art across painting, sculpture, installation, performance, film and video. Its exhibition spaces span more than 1,600 square metres, anchored by the cavernous Kesselhaus, roughly twenty metres in height and length on each side, which still bears the physical traces of its industrial past and has hosted major site specific commissions by artists including Roman Signer, David Claerbout, Haegue Yang, Thomas Scheibitz, Bettina Pousttchi, Nik Nowak, Alexandra Bircken, Mona Hatoum, Emma Talbot and Alfredo Jaar. The adjoining Maschinenhaus offers three further floors of exhibition space, including the M1 VideoSpace opened in 2020, supporting a continuous programme of solo and group presentations.
Since February 2020, the institution has been led by artistic director Kathrin Becker, who succeeded founding director Andreas Fiedler and has shaped a curatorial focus on the interaction between social issues and art as a communicative space for critically engaging a globalised present. This curatorial trajectory positions KINDL not only as an exhibition venue but as a place for producing and discussing contemporary art, responsive to current artistic developments and accompanied by an extensive discursive and educational programme of lectures, artist talks, panels, readings, symposia and workshops.
The institution's core organisational pillars rest on this combination of exhibition making, discursive programming and education, with particular emphasis on rooting the institution within its immediate neighbourhood. A long running, multi year education project engages local school classes from Neukölln across several grade levels, reflecting KINDL's understanding of itself as a catalyst for community interaction and urban development within a rapidly changing part of the city. The institution also regularly cooperates with cultural partners such as the Komische Oper and citywide festivals including Tanz im August and 48 Stunden Neukölln.
KINDL operates as a non profit institution, with all proceeds channelled directly back into its exhibition programme, a model that underlines its independence and its sustained commitment to accessible, publicly oriented contemporary art.