VIENNAFAIR 2014 The New Contemporary. Booth: Steve Turner Contemporary. Copyright courtesy of Steve Turner Contemporary
There are many cities vying to be the next Berlin. Vienna, this week, presented itself as credible candidate with Viennafair, the Parallel side event and the “curated by_vienna” programme of exhibitions presenting exciting art from Austria, Eastern Europe and beyond. There are plenty of dilapidated art venues to discover, architectural bars (the Loos Bar, designed by Adolf Loos for example) and a wealth of cultural heritage to gawp at. Meanwhile, the food is delicious, and there are plenty of men in Lederhosen to admire – the Viennese take their traditional dress very seriously indeed.
Viennafair traditionally functions as gateway to Eastern Europe, with participating galleries hailing from Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Serbia, among others. A large-scale installation of arrestingly pink mattresses in the middle of the site, courtesy of the curated by_vienna team gave respite, although at the time that Sleek stopped by, no wearied collectors were having a quick snooze. Galleries were showing both established (at Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Guy Pieters and Triumph Gallery among others) and emerging positions, but generally, the art shown was in the affordable price ranges: below €50,000 in most, and below €10,000 in emerging cases.
Viennafair is quite regional: the 99 participating galleries are mainly Austrian (33), with 41 originating from the Central and Eastern European area, but most international participants hail from Germany/Berlin, such as KOW, Crone and Zak Branicka (who won a prize for their presentation of Natalia Stachon and Szymon Kobarz. The atmosphere is buzzy, but most galleries, unsure of their reception, have packed a mixed bag of wares, with installation jostling with photograms, works on paper and conceptual art, as Bea Herhold de Sousa of London gallery the Agency remarked. This translated to Nigerian photography, Italian sculpture (a very BDSM harness piece by Simona Brinkmann, priced at €10,000) and British Pop Art sharing a booth. However, this approach seems to have hit a nerve: Artnet reported “galloping” sales, and certainly the opening was abuzz with collectors, gallerists dancing from client to client.
The Parallel fair, in a dilapidated former tax office in an outlying district was the secondary fair, with project spaces, independent curators and young galleries from Vienna, Graz and beyond participating. It functions as a Litmus test for the health of the younger art scene in these regions, and given the range of works on view, much rests on the curatorial efforts of the spaces and galleries involved. Again, there is much of Jerry Saltz’s Neo-Mannerist installation and Minimalist-inspired sculpture on view, and much “Zombie Formalist” abstraction. But here and there lurk more interesting efforts, such as in the room curated by Cornelis van Almsick, which united the artists Rendl-Wittmann and Buschmann in a site-specific installation of painting and photography.
Jan Fabre, Brein met engelenvleugels, 2011. Wax, 24 x 26 x 30 cm, courtesy of Guy Pieters Gallery.
Most fairs now boast a talks programme as well as a special visitors’ schedule: this was also a feature at Viennafair. Beatriz Colomina, a Stanford professor of architecture, is the curator-in-chief for the 20 participating galleries of curated by_vienna, and in a talk on Thursday introduced her central concept of the bed as a new place engulfed by the neoliberal mandate to produce, produce, produce.
Touring the participating galleries a day later, after a late night at the Spike party (at which Berlin’s favourite Canadian, Jeremy Shaw, DJed), and much Jägermeister flowed, Sleek was struck by the sheer tenacity and ambition of the participating galleries. They had each selected a curator, ranging from former Museum Ludwig director Philipp Kaiser at Nächst St Stephan via the well-known Vienna professor and Texte zur Kunst writer Sabeth Buchmann at Gallerie Mezzanin to Carson Chan, all riffing on Colomina’s central concept. Her main source was a 2012 quote from the WSJ, stating that 80% of New York professionals regularly work from bed. Chan’s interpretation was quite literal literal, as he showed Rafman’s piece “Still Life (betamale)” (2014), with its lingering close-ups of game-caves and online sexual obsession, as well as an early Shaw multi-channel video piece on dreams.
A sweet piece by Francis Alys showed slides of dogs, people, anything sleeping. Several beds, one an image done over by Felix Gonzales-Torres, made an appearance. John Kelsey at Mayer Kainer turns out to be rather devoid of effort, while elsewhere there was much empty formalism. All in all, however, the galleries, which are centred on two close hubs with a few outliers, presented a very strong programme. Couple this with the Viennafair, whose efforts to channel conversation on Central and Eastern European art and galleries set it apart from the larger propositions, and newer positions on view at Parallel make an Autumn weekend in Vienna a very attractive proposition.
ViennaFair ran from 2-5 October 2014.
Text by Jeni Fulton
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