Viktor Witkowski reviews the multi-venue exhibition Painting Forever at the Berlinische Galerie, the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Neue Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen, Berlin, on view through November 10, 2013.

Witkowski writes that the title Painting Forever "comes with a sense of humor and the realization that maybe any mention of the death of painting is irrelevant… The exhibition Keilrahmen (German for stretchers), which is shown as part of Painting Forever at the KW Institut for Contemporary Art, offers the most diversity. It consists of over 70 works by contemporary Berlin painters and creates a welcoming antipode to the other venues which have been supplied with predominantly established artists. One stand-out in this cluster of works is Birgit Megerle’s Geometric Eye… [her] brush work is both deliberate and considered, the figure’s cheek, neck and chest reveal underpaint but it is left alone just enough to rejoin the other parts of the painting – like a porous island that suddenly surfaced. This is a more harmonious understanding of painting, away from the notion that the act of painting has to be one of apparent, formal ruptures."