THE BEST ICE CREAM IN VIENNA (Bermuda Triangle be damned)

I live in the Bermuda Triangle of Eissalons (Ice cream parlors): Zanoni & Zanoni, Eissalon Tuchlauben and Gelateria Hohemarkt, each separated by their fans and foes and a mere 2 minute walk. Though my favorite flavor resides a whole 4 minute walk away at Schwedenplatz....if I ever disappear check the triangle.

ESPERANTO - DESPERADO

I had a brief conversation with a near stranger about the Esperanto language during the Saturday Gallery visits at the Julien Bismuth exhibition at Galerie Emanuel Layr. This got me thinking about one of my favorite yearly adventures... Lange Nacht der Museen. Lange Nacht der Museen is a national treasure where for a set price (cheap) or with a PRESS card (free) one can explore into the wee hours of the morning all the museums in one of the great museum cities of the world...Vienna. (Yes, still, since the last time I wrote the same thing). I go every year that I am around and I get a little depressed if I miss it. And each year I find something strange and this year I 'discovered' the Esperanto Museum. 

And lastly because it sounds like ESPERANTO I offer up DESPERADO the 1973 classic Eagle's song that was played a disproportionate number of times at the now defunct Turkey's Nest Tavern. The Turkey's Nest was a classic Hasidic dive bar (yes, I can write that, laugh and listen to the song all at the same time!) located on the corner next to the baseball diamonds in WIlliamsburg, Brooklyn. And we danced, dancarto*.


Adiaŭ ...as they would say in Esperanto!


(*Dancarto - is apparently more the art of dancing which I am certain we were not doing at the Turkey's Neck Nest...but it sounds good.)

SATURDAY GALLERIES: VIENNA 4

Fernand Léger
Mechanical Elements
1926 

I walked out of the nice newly renovated and re-named Galerie Emanuel Layr (formerly Layr + Wuestenhagen) thinking about Fernand Leger and Francis Picabia. Not because the artist Julien Bismuth whose exhibition is currently up happens to be French or that the work has any visual affinity to these machine-mad men but because of the gleaming trophy of an espresso machine in the back office that churned out a 25 second ristretto in half the time and tasted great.

SATURDAY GALLERIES: VIENNA 3

Christoph Meier in -Polis-Pollis-Politics- @ Das Weisse Haus

And the beat goes on...

Currently Das Weisse Haus has two exhibitions The Borders of Drawing in the main rooms and –Polis-Pollis-Politics- in the project room. P.P.P. is a smart and tautly curated group exhibition that (in the version I saw) hung an Ute Müller vertical blind sculpture as its center piece conceptually while creating rotating slices of the show as one moves around the room.

The Borders of Drawing in its generic title suggests something not generic, but rather at the edge of drawing in an expanded field. The show is in fact a pragmatic and conservative survey of drawing that is largely architecturally based and uniformily black and white. But where the The Borders of Drawing largely fails in the testing of borders it succeeds in reaffirming that drawing is exactly what you think it is. Some may find comfort in the inviolable border of our own imaginations.

Jonathan Quinn in –Polis-Pollis-Politics- @ Das Weisse Haus

SATURDAY GALLERIES: VIENNA 2

Klaus Auderer, Shark Attack...,Tel Aviv @ Galerie Dana Charkasi

I am listening to two art-world people talk about the Luisa Kasalicky exhibition at the BAWAG. The one says “But what does it mean? It means nothing!” And the other person describes it as “looking like it was made out of all the building materials that can kill you from the 70’s.” I’ll call it Asbestos Aesthetic.

SATURDAY GALLERIES: VIENNA 1

Christopher Wool

A friend was on a quiche kick this week and I was first in line to try both versions. Scrumptious! We then headed out to the galleries on this bright and sunny Saturday afternoon and I expected lots of people would have the same idea. But no, it was pretty empty in those art galleries. 

Galerie Winiarczyk was closed but the window was completely open! Blown out from the crazy winds and a clever cowgirl could have lassoed a sculpture out but we decided to alert the gallerist instead. Next door at Galerie Meyer Kainer all the glass was in tact but the walls were being jostled by the large blocking of paper, fabric and paintings of Heimo Zobernig. I was not a fan of his last show at this gallery so I carried a sort of anticipatory dread of disappointment with me before entering the exhibition.