“The Berlinale has never existed in a state of purity, in which politics and society could be separated from art, as Alfred Bauer claimed in his attempts to clear his name.” (Berlinale Press Statement, 2020)

Since its inception as “a showcase of the free world” in 1951, Germany’s most prestigious film festival – the Berlinale – has awarded trophies embellished with small upright bears to its prize winners. The first bear to assume this role was made by the artist Renée Sintenis in 1932, a couple of years before she was expelled from Berlin’s Akademie der Künste due to her Jewish ancestry – in keeping with Nazi Germany’s Staatsräson.

In 1956, the Berlinale’s founding director – Alfred Bauer – commissioned Sintenis to make a second bear, which she titled Berliner Bär. Like the bear preceding it, its jaunty pose echoes that of the heraldic bear featured on Berlin’s flag and coat of arms. Given its dual role as a mascot for the festival and an unofficial ambassador of Berlin over the last 70 years, Sintenis’ second bear has achieved a degree of public visibility that far eclipses the story of the artist herself.

As she died in 1965, Sintenis could not have known that her little ursine sculpture – in its guise as the Berlinale’s Silver Bear – would be re-christened the ‘Alfred Bauer Prize’ in 1987, in honour of the man who presided over the festival for 25 years. Nor could she have known that this practice would be abruptly discontinued in 2020, at which point the role that Bauer had played under Joseph Goebbels within the film bureaucracy of Nazi Germany, could no longer be denied.

The traumatised readymades presented in this exhibition, have been rescued from Berlin’s Noack Foundry – where they would otherwise, quite literally, have been destined for meltdown. Due to their physical imperfections, these diminutive miscasts have been deemed unfit to enter service alongside their more glamorous siblings, the Berlinale’s coveted Golden and Silver Bears. They are exhibited here – caged in glass vitrines and replete with the wounds of their making – as the first part of a more extensive homage to Renée Sintenis (1888-1965).

Miscast pays tribute to an artist whose legacy has been swallowed by a bronze bear, an inanimate creature that has itself been subject to considerable indignities over the years.