Various Projects designers Elizabeth Beer and Brian Janusiak -- also the owners of super cool LES store Project No. 8 -- are part of a new gallery space that's just opened in Berlin called Arratia, Beer. The gallery opened its doors this past Friday with an exhibition entitled PSYCHOMETRY (II).

The stories that come from objects or events are a haunting of those things. If you want to know the pyramids you can do extensive research at the library … or you can also visit them in Egypt. People write history, but objects do most of talking.

Part 1 of this exhibition investigated a 1975 movie called The Ghost of flight 401. This film is a story about a pilot, played stoically by Ernest Borgnine, who crashes a passenger plane. After the scattered pieces of the plane are gathered, its salvageable parts are re-used in other airplanes, and Ernest's guilt-ridden ghost appears on those flights warning of potential dangers.

In Psychometry (II) artists explore further the theory that all things give off an emanation of their past.

Curator D-L Alvarez, asked a range of people to participate and the breadth of mediums reflect that. Oregon-based artist Brenna Murphy sends oblique instructions via a website which Matthew-Lutz Kinoy channels into an assemblage of everyday objects; In Alms to the Birds (2009) Adrian Hermanides salvages some of the belongings of a local photographer who has passed on and offers them on a alter of sorts (the title is a direct translation of the Tibetan term for a sky burial, where the body is chopped up and left on a hillside for the birds to disperse); Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Jennifer Locke both create works that play with the reflective nature of photography, Locke's Sightings (2009) has two components, one in each of the two galleries. Also in the exhibition is sculptor Nayland Blake and sound works by Alexandre Estrela and Stanley Lieber.

Check out their site for more details. If you're in Berlin, stop by and report back.

PSYCHOMETRY (II)
Various Artists
Arratia, Beer
Mehringdamm 55
Berlin
Through 04.18.09