In the Wake of Vienna’s Autumn Art Leviathan
SPIKE
18 October 2024
By Max Henry
Photo: Andrey Gordasevich
A hard-boiled critic wades through Curated by, viennacontemporary, PARTICOLARE, and Parallel, scouring the damp city for its standout installations.
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Out of the gray mist of thunderstorms, the collectible exhibition Particolare appeared at Kursalon, a 19th-century music hall in the 1st District. Here at last was a tight ship, sound in its concept and discerning in its curatorial vision and structural organization, with an open floor plan (as in Basel, Unlimited) amid intimate surroundings. Participation is by invitation and fee-free; the fair takes a 20% commission on sales. Less was more. Modeled after early 20th-century French salons, Particolare gave dignity back to the art viewing-experience, the fine oval ceilings and glittering chandeliers adding a dose of glamour. It was a connoisseur’s game there, grounded by the playfulness of the installation and tactful use of the space. Obviously, the game here is for “A” level works (though a couple fell short), benchmarked by the top-tier excellence of TEFAF, Maastricht. With a triumvirate of very experienced curators, you immediately sensed a different approach.
A circular entry/exit was divided by a wall projection of the arresting performance HIGGS, In Search of the Anti-Motti (2005), wherein Gianni Motti (*1958) followed with his own body a proton’s trajectory through CERN’s twenty-seven-kilometer-long particle accelerator. Moving around this prelude, the main hall was spaced with unexpected juxtapositions and strong sculptures. Rising star Liesl Raff (*1979) showed her bonafides with the totemic Short Liaisons (tripod) (2022/23). It soared towards the ceiling, trailing its natural rubber downwards into elegant curlicues of minimalist, color-coded stripes. To its right stood John Miller (*1954) and Richard Hoeck’s (*1965) Living in a Hearse (2009), a child mannequin dressed in biker gear and tattooed with the cave paintings at Lascaux – a punk gesture from long-time collaborators. A Joseph Kosuth (*1945) neon work, L.W.’s Last Words [Cobalt blue] Text reads: Sprache (1991), also drew me near, before I found my way to a darkened, enclosed space with the sound of whirring fans, where Žilvinas Kempinas’s (*1969) whimsical Flying Tape (2004) shifted my senses to more ephemeral things.
Upstairs was a surprise: the sounds of a live piano player performing Erik Satie’s mournful composition Vexations (c. 1893–94). Its Dada touch was made all the more piquant by Alicja Kwade’s (*1979) show-stopping Amáss (2021), a twisted trombone embedded into concrete blocks (and priced at six figures). Installed altarpiece-style, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s (*1933) large-scale, three-panel Smartphone giovane donna 6 movimenti F (Smartphone young woman 6 movements F, 2018), showing a woman in three positions gazing at her screen with her back turned to the viewer, chimed with the surreptitious people-watching of art-viewing spaces. Rob Pruitt’s (*1964) new twenty-four panel painting May 17, 2024 (One Day) (2024) brought a burst of gradient color, conceptual rigor, and gravity (the title is his birthday), while an ornamental sculpture by Plamen Dejanoff (*1970), Foundation Requirements (Door) (2014), beautifully framed Pruitt’s eye-friendly palette in an elaborately carved wooden portal.
Particolare won out with a smart, ambitious format and lots of big-ticket names. Keeping in mind its three-month turnaround, one wonders what might take shape with more lead-time and wider promotion (my mentions of it met with many shrugs, then curiosity). New benchmarks have to be met in this dog-eat-dog carousel of art fairs and ancillary cultural events. A more productive future will come only of constructive criticism and investment in the long view, not from tiresome complaints about the state of things. For all the critiques of the art-fair model, or even late-capitalist antagonisms, it’s unprecedented that so many artists today are able to lead fruitful working lives in this leviathan of contemporary art. Let the cream rise to the top!
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