Chaos Leaking from City Streets to Canvas: Robert Rauschenberg and “Crosstown” at BASTIAN Berlin

Sweeping the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964 and shattering the art world’s traditional canvas molds, Robert Rauschenberg is renowned for his daring attitude that placed the pure flow of life at the heart of art. Setting out with the motto “All of life is open to art,” for the master artist a crushed street sign, an old car tire, or a worn bedsheet was no different from oil paint squeezed from a tube or canvas cloth. On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, Galerie BASTIAN in Berlin brings this extraordinary complicity Rauschenberg established with objects back into focus with the exhibition “Crosstown,” running from September 11 to November 21, 2026.

The most fascinating aspect of Rauschenberg’s practice was his acceptance of material as it is, without any concern for nobleifying it, establishing an equal dialogue with objects by stating, in his own words, “The materials know that they and I are trying something together.” Bringing metropolis debris, street memory, and the remnants of everyday life onto the surface through silkscreen and transfer printing techniques he discovered simultaneously with Andy Warhol in 1962, the artist invites the viewer to constantly shift their perspective rather than condemning them to a single fixed point.

Standing at the heart of the exhibition and giving the selection its name, the monumental 1997 work Crosstown rises as a massive, hierarchy-free panorama of the urban landscape. Multi-layered photographic motifs rendered onto a polylaminate surface using vegetable dyes and special transfer methods combine with painterly interventions to give birth to a fluid urban narrative where everything grazes past one another. Looking back at it today, nearly thirty years after its creation, Crosstown stands like a prophetic urban allegory heralding today’s endless image bombardment and digital visual flood decades in advance.

Opening its doors to art lovers with an inauguration on the evening of Thursday, September 10, the exhibition stands as one of the most valuable stops of the Berlin autumn for those who wish to get lost in the boundless world of the city, material, and images through the eyes of one of the 20th century’s most radical minds.