FRANZ WEST OPENING @ MEYER KAINER

SATURDAY GALLERIES: VIENNA 5

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Elliot The Waste Land

T.S. Elliot

It would be convenient if tough days were confined soley to an already difficult month. I am would be willing to sacrifice February for this very purpose - to reserve for malaise and malady. But what actually happens is you get a disaster here, a loss there and the next thing you know the whole damn year is flecked with existential crisis and bleak anniversaries. Even April gets blemished, but of course, T.S. Elliot already told us that in the first lines of his modernist masterpiece, The Waste Land.

I had been thinking about the poet is relation to other people suffering as I left the house to view the galleries. Luckily at the end of the day I left these galleries still believing that making art matters. (Litmus test #1: check.) I also thought that maybe all art can be extracted from a few lines in T.S. Elliot.

So of course, the first show I walk into is….

WILL BENEDICT

Will Benedict gave a presentation last night as part of Artist Lecture Series organized by Azara and Rainer Spangl.

Benedict is half the power behind the very cool Pro Choice Gallery along with partner Lucie Stahl. Presently they are also working to open up a bar (L'Ocean Licker - if I got that straight) next to a very small gay bar called the Blue Banana (which shouldn't sound crass at all). 

BERNADETTE CORPORATION & REENA SPAULINGS: AFTER PARTY

DInner at the Red Elephant for NYC based artists Bernadette Corporation who had their opening at Galerie Meyer Kainer last night. 

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 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.