Vienna Art Week was a primary reason why we decided to come to Vienna, and when we came. For me, it was an excuse to see the city while working in residence in Graz. Susan Hapgood had highly recommended it and the only question was balancing time with Vanesa and time "working." I was particularly interested in seeing what was happening at the alternative spaces.[1] I would have liked to have time to visit the Artist in Residence of Krinzinger Projekte, kunsthalle Exnergasse, Q21/MuseumsQuartier or studio das weiss haus but they all would begin after our scheduled departure or were closed because it was Sunday.
The first event we tried to visit was in a furniture store. I liked the idea of art art occupying the space of decorative art. Unfortunately the information of the opening time posted online was not right and the place was locked and no one was inside. The photos of cities weren't that interesting anyway and I got more from the description than I would have from some time mingling with strangers:
Fifty percent of the world population today dwells in cities. By 2025, 500 million more people will live in the 600 largest cities in the world. Apparently cities remain “the most promising paradises.” Luca Faccio has captured the centers and peripheries of metropolises such as Tokyo, Seoul, New York, Pyongyang, Beijing, Mexico City and Vienna. He presents his travel photographs in the ambience of a vintage furniture store under liquidation in order to trace the visions of international (post-)modernism “in retrovisionary fashion” (Paolo Bianchi). [2]
The second event we tried to visit was an artist talk at Loft8 by the realist painters Richard Jurtitsch and Marianne Lang. I presumed the talk would be in English because many of the events on the website specified that the event would be in German, and this event did not. But when we entered the gallery the attendant immediately approached us and asked if we understood German and told us it would be entirely in German but that we were welcome to stay and enjoy the nuances of the German language. Very nice, but we left after looking at the paintings of photorealistic water on glass or metal and buildings made of green, plant-like cells.
We decide to play it safe by going to a big institution that had no talk, just a show: "VER _VER _VER“ at the Sigmund Freud Museum. Outside was the video installation of Katharina Heinrich. We spent about 30 seconds watching the text on screen.[3] Inside was a show of mostly conceptual art works, which seemed fitting in the Freud Museum. Conceptual art may be the bastard grandchild of psychoanalysis. A few big names and a few new works I hadn't seen. But the real prize was at the wine table. At first only people over 50 were there; a younger graffiti artist came later. I think in total, including Vanesa and I, there were 11 people at this "opening." I spoke with one lady who seemed on the autistic spectrum. The man who was talking to her quickly disappeared when we introduced ourselves. It did not feel like a healthy art "scene" but maybe "If you build it they will come" ?
The art that I most enjoyed in Vienna was at Ed Ruscha's exhibition at Secession in which he showed used drum heads skins with double negative phrases painted on them. "Ruscha's show at Secession marks the public debut of a new series of linguistic paintings informed by his memories of Oklahoma City, where he spent his teenage years, and the city's distinctive slang: used parchment drumheads are inscribed with locution whose shared feature is the use of a double negation–"I ain't telling you no lie," for example, and "I can't find my keys nowhere."[4] Ruscha's artist books were gorgeous, holding ground against his 2 meter paintings of an American flag weathering in front of a series of sky conditions.
Philipp Timischl's show, Artworks for All Age Groups, was an unconvincing attempt at blasé, undermined by repetition of the ordinary. The artist dressed in drag-hyper-glam-gold, high heels, color-coordinated with the Beethoven murals, was photographed moving through the museum, accompanied by a shirtless male companion. The photos were stylistically fashion-magazine, ca. 1990s. The gender/identity element distracted from the teetering plinths and corporate paint-ball arena, obstacle-course layout of the show, safely mixed with unrewarding looping videos, coyly comprised of a counting down clock that endured longer than the content itself. The show was basically four artworks–the photos, the video, the tilting plinths, and the performance of the photos–re-iterated again and again, in subtle variation through a series of rooms. Timischl has figured out how to monetize video art by tacking a 2D work above the display and placing the monitor on the floor, as if they two works interact like a diptych. But in the company of Ruscha, whose unique, idiosyncratic, dry body of work was foundational for the banal art trends of the 1990s (Koons, et al), Timischl's regurgitation at claim to "the everyday" is clumsy, insecure and confused. But this was a curatorial shortcoming; the work would have been more engaging in one large room, rather than a several small rooms, which would have drawn more attention to the nuances in the chains and photos.
The night markets were in season swing. Glühwein and sweets in the crowd and the ineradicable memory of the headline of a terrorist van driving through the splendor.
[1] The participating alternative spaces were: Apartment Draschan & Draschan; Blickle Raum Spiegelglas; Dimensions Variable; fAN Kunstverein; Favorites in Favoriten; flatI; fluc; hinterland galerie; k48 - Offensive fur zeitgenössische Wahrnehmung Projektraum Oliver Hangl; Kunstraum Super; Neuer Kunstverein Wien; PFERD - Forum zur Forderung Zeitgenössischer Kunst; Salon 4; and sehsaal.
[2] Exhibition: “Luca Faccio – Metro:snoisiV” Lagerhaus 1900–1950, Große Neugasse.
[3] The material on which Katharina Heinrich’s new video work is based consists of three words, each with the prefix “VER.” The individual letters run in horizontal shifts, elongations and overlappings to form a bright horizon on a dark background. This continuously flowing rhythm gives rise to a mass of character combinations whose meaning cannot be figured out for some time. It is only after the first five minutes of this 10-minute piece have passed that one of the nouns starts to emerge more clearly, while the other two vanish. For a moment, it is only the suffix of one (“UNG”) together with the prefix of the other (“VER”) that flank the “leitmotif” remaining in the middle.
The vanished terms linger in the memory for a while like afterimages, and yet their semantics hold more than just a simple reference to the rules of grammar. The attempt to establish significant links between the words enriches the kaleidoscopic moving script with complex levels of meaning. “The work refers to the current global sociopolitical situation, the suggestive use of language in elections. The words are an allusion in particular to 2018 as an anniversary year in Austria,” says the artist, who also utilizes modes of “delusion and disillusion” and of “construction and deconstruction” as tools for gaining insight.
[4] Ed Ruscha, Philip Timischl, Kris Lemsalu: 16.11.2018-20.1.2019" Secession museum booklet, Vienna, Austria 2018.