Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Berlin’s hip art scene has got even hipper in the past months, as galleries spring up in a decaying industrial area behind the new main station and the Hamburger Bahnhof contemporary-art museum.

Warehouses, garages and workshops in Heidestrasse are morphing into cavernous homes for art. Weekend openings are an event, with art-hungry Berliners picking their way over cobbles and up wobbly metal staircases to go between galleries. You do wonder how many are there for the art and how many for the bottles of beer and free cheap wine served in plastic cups.

Those with stamina then dance the night away at Tape, a hot new club in an old depot, where the DJs don’t start mixing until five-to-midnight and the party only warms up much later.

I trudged through the derelict landscape and snow on a Friday night in January, eyes watery in Siberian temperatures. My evening began at Haunch of Venison’s opening of an exhibition of Bill Viola’s video art. The centerpiece, taking over the central hall of the gallery, is the pale shimmering figure of a man rising from murky ocean depths, slowly coming into view.

He breaks the surface in color and full focus, before sinking back until almost out of sight and then reemerging, a continuous oscillation between life and death. The work, called “The Messenger,” was first commissioned for Durham Cathedral in 1996.

Turkish Mustache

Galerie Tanas is showing the work of Nasan Tur, a German- born artist of Turkish descent who works with a number of media: video, photography, installation and performance art. In one performance work in 2000, he grew a mustache and observed how fellow Turks began greeting him in the streets as one of them, while his German friends found it alienating.

Perhaps more interesting than his social commentary is the 2006 conceptual installation “Rien ne va plus,” a roulette wheel that spins permanently, never allowing the ball to fall into a slot. It works by challenging expectations and evoking reflections on the nature of suspense and chance.

Just around the corner from Heidestrasse, at the back of a parking lot full of containers and behind a wholesale store selling Mediterranean produce, is Halle am Wasser, a warehouse transformed into a gleaming new home for six galleries.

Flower Poetry

There, Loock Galerie is showing Yoshihiro Suda’s delicate wooden flower sculptures. They have an old-fashioned poetry and craftsmanship that stands out here.

The artist positions his works in unexpected places: Some are near the ceiling, some virtually on the floor. They are not cheap -- one flower that fits in the palm of your hand can cost as much as 15,000 euros ($19,960).

At Arndt & Partner, I got hooked by Julian Rosefeldt’s 2006 “Lonely Planet,” a 16-minute video loop showing the artist’s journeys through India in typical traveler garb with an oversized backpack and bandanna tied around his head.

Rosefeldt’s role switches from onlooker to participant to the star of his own show, as cinemagoers crowd around him, laughing and clapping. He observes a typical call center, walks against the traffic in a chaotic Bombay street and joins in as a dancer on a Bollywood film set. The work is a study of how outsiders perceive and are perceived, an intriguing examination of what and who is exotic and why.

In the Berlin art scene, it is hard to be exotic, though I saw a couple of people trying. One man in overalls and a hard hat was touring the galleries with a digital camcorder. At Galerie Jarmuschek, he filmed as a man with a ladder on his back took various positions on the floor, observed by a woman in a bird- watching hideout with a pair of binoculars.

Exotic Voyeurs

This was the performance part of Juergen Wolf’s first exhibition in Berlin. A series of small acrylics on satisfyingly chunky blocks of wood features female posteriors, lavish interiors and exotic animals including zebras. These are voyeuristic, in some cases even fetishistic yet light-hearted fantasies that are sure to find their fans, though I can’t say I am one.

Surveying the bleakness around me as I left the show, I got to thinking how in Berlin at least, art always seems to be the first to take advantage of such neglected sites.

It occurred to me that perhaps the world’s financial districts will be the industrial wastelands of the future. Does that mean that in years to come, contemporary-art lovers will be riding rickety, unserviced elevators up abandoned skyscrapers to catch the latest show? Maybe we will all be there, drinking cheap wine out of plastic cups, surrounded by battered filing cabinets and expensive leather sofas with leaky stuffing.

Then it was time for a gluehwein and the bus home.

Bill Viola is showing at Haunch of Venison in Berlin, Heidestrasse 46, through Feb. 21. Nasan Tur is showing at Galerie Tanas, Heidestrasse 50, through March 14. Yoshihiro Suda is showing at Loock Galerie through Feb. 21. Juergen Wolf is showing at Jarmuschek & Partner through Feb. 21.

(Catherine Hickley writes for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Catherine Hickley at chickley@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 14, 2009 19:00 EST