Catalogue > At random

Inspired by the children’s book About Two Squares created by El Lisstzky exactly 100 years ago, Transient Witness simultaneously merges and obscures the intimate from the public, in a story where the actions of collecting and stealing function as synonyms and inheritance and loss immerse. It is a fictional story of the transfer of the objects from the private house of avant-garde collector Egidio Marzona in Berlin to their new domicile – the Japanisches Palais, a Rococo building that belongs to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). The plot is told through the eyes of three main characters: Christina, the manager of the collection; Maurizio, the art mover; and Präsens the collector’s dog. Fiction meets reality: the film takes place on 25 November 2019. On that day, priceless jewelry of immense cultural value was stolen from the Green Vault in Dresden in one of the biggest art heists in history, causing a national shock in Germany. The film unfolds a complex story, navigating between historical facts about the Baroque and the Avant-garde; art and its politics.

Assaf Gruber (b. Jerusalem, 1980) is a sculptor and filmmaker who lives and works in Berlin. The dialectical relationship between the individual and the establishment is at the centre of his work, which explores how political orientations of institutions impact the lives of individuals and how institutions choose to represent and communicate facts and artefacts. Gruber studied at the Cooper Union in New York and is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. His solo exhibitions include the Muzeum Sztuki, ?ód? (2015), the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018), Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2018), among others. His films have been featured in festivals including the Berlinale Film Festival, FID Marseille (2019), and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2016).