OPEN HEART FILM & BOOK LAUNCH

Berlin-based Australian artist Joseph Marr works with sugar as his primary medium, creating sculpture, photo collage, video installation, and painting. Marr’s sculpture “Together” in the Klo Bar in Berghain commissioned in 2013 is a love story about the journey of transformation within human relationships. Central to his practice is a conceptual exploration of consciousness that fluidly shifts between object, painting, and moving image.
On Sunday 03.05.26 18:00 at Kantine am Berghain Marr will launch his second monograph with Distanz Verlag “Open Heart”, alongside a film by Viktor Jakovleski, Ilya Marcus, Dmitry Khmelnitsky, and Maciej Rolbiecki entitled: THIS IS MY HEART
RRUCCULLA (Bilbao) Dj set
Mandel Turner (NYC) Dj set
“Open Heart” was an 800 kg sugar sculpture of an anatomical human heart melting in Park am Gleisdreieck during Berlin Art Week 2024. The new monograph documents the full process behind the installation, as well as the paintings created from the recycled sugar following the work’s transformation.
The event at Kantine will commence with a talk between the art writer Boris Pofalla and Marr as the publication opens with an essay by Pofalla titled “Open Heart Reflections”. The book continues with a dialogue between Marr and artist Michael Sailstorfer discussing the challenges and ambitions of the project. A medical text exploring the functions of the human heart concludes the volume, together with an explanation of the historical medical model used as the sculpture’s reference—manufactured in Japan in 1890 by the Shimadzu Corporation. Featuring over 100 colour plates by photographer Pascal Hoffmann & impeccably designed by Heller-C GmbH. Signed copies will be for sale on the night.
Accompanying the launch is the short film THIS IS MY HEART exploring Marr’s public installation, whose preservation depended on collective participation: visitors were invited to ride stationary bicycles connected to a generator, producing the power required to sustain the sculpture’s environment.
The documentary reflects on impermanence, communal effort, and the cyclical nature of life and decay. Drawing inspiration from the Buddhist concept of Samsara—the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth—Marr employs sugar, a material both seductive and transient, to symbolise the fragility of existence.
As the sculpture slowly melts without sustained communal effort, it becomes a powerful metaphor for collective responsibility and the interconnectedness of human actions. Through poetic behind-the-scenes footage and intimate narration by the artist, the film offers a meditation on the intersections of art, life, and shared human experience.