Dealers, Divas and Curators Reconceptualize

Vienna | Simon Hewitt

Like a Habsburg eagle the actual ViennaFair, which ran Oct. 10-13, looks simultaneously towards
the capitalist West (half its exhibitors result from Austria, Germany and also Switzerland) as well as
the post-Communist East (nearly two-fifths originate from Central & Eastern Europe).
The eastern lurch features lengthy been sponsored by simply Erste Bank, which do company in the
region, as well as was strengthened by the Fair's 2012 acquisition through Reed Exhibitions by a
pair of Russians, Sergey Skatershikov and also Dmitry Axenov. Skatershikov, an artwork form
investment specialist, had been perceived since the dominant partner, however shipped upon total
manage to always be able to Axenov, any property tycoon, just before you might say wienerschnitzel.
Suspicions latvian, latvia, latvia's that the Fair mobility may not necessarily be the particular
artwork world's nearly all bracing investment were compounded through a few of this year's
innovations, which usually included ditching the catalogue and shifting the particular entrance from
your swanky glass and also marble foyer with leading of the Messe Wien exhibition center to the
tacky glass as well as tarmac doorway round the back.
Once inside, however, the Fair was crackling using energy, underscored through the exotic presence
regarding artists from Albania, Almaty along with Azerbaijan, as well as exhibitions flown within via
Prishtina, Kosovo along with Tbilisi, Georgia. There had been also any lively talks plan and also bevy
of imaginative social events to maintain connoisseurs calling (and downing) your shots following
dark.
Credit regarding this cosmopolitan cocktail must go towards the Fair's Artistic Directors, Vita
Zaman as well as Christina Steinbrecher, although regardless regarding whether Vitina (as these
plutonium blondes are generally collectively known) ought for you to be considered the Stars of The
Show, as implied through their diva-like photo within the front with the fair's VIP Booklet (bizarrely
dominated by simply Sigmund Freud's essay upon Happiness), is but another matter.
The four-day fair attracted 23,000 visitors. Almost one-third associated with those were crammed
directly into what Vitina dubbed a new 'grandiose' vernissage -- an adjective which, inside the lack of
Dom Prignon, Beluga caviar and also breathing space, requirements cautious handling.
Heroic sprang more readily for you to mind.

Every artwork fair worth fretting concerning needs controversy and the ViennaFair found it in the
unlikely form of neon tubes through Latvia. Andris Bre?e's "White Square," arguably the most
powerful just work at the particular Fair, has been destined to always be able to headline the stand
involving Riga's Alma Gallery -- until any Belgian gallery over the aisle objected to its overwhelming
presence, as well as got it shifted for an obscure corner of the VIP Lounge. Heroic along with
grandiose weren't among the words spluttered by gallery owner Astr?da Ri??e to describe a decision
that amounted for an anti-Latvian snub -- Bre?e having been shortlisted pertaining to this year's
Purvitis Prize, the particular country's nearly all prestigious art award.
Ri??e founded your ex gallery throughout 2005 and has built up along with exquisite taste; your
monochrome paintings associated with Barbara Gaile, which she showed in Artwork Vilnius
throughout 2011, are the subtlest I have got seen in a fair in Central Europe. following in her
regional wake are an emerging generation involving youthful female galristes whose passion as
well as energy offset the actual challenge of offering art within countries exactly where few
individuals buy it.
Dora Bulart coming from Varna (Bulgaria), Olga Temnikova through Tallinn (Estonia) along with
Katrin & Vesselina Sariev via Plovdiv (Bulgaria) are usually names that spring in order to mind, but
the profession regarding Romania's Anca Poterasu is specially improbable. Poterasu hails from a
village inside rural Maramures nearby the Ukrainian border, where many houses have pitchforks
around the wall as opposed to paintings. Once I 1st achieved your ex -- at an art industry symposium
throughout Bucharest throughout 2007 -- she has been the particular perkiest individual inside the
audience and, clean from a Master's Diploma within European Social Politics with Bucharest
University, has been adamant that will -- armed just 'with my laptop and also my scooter' -- the lady
would be a skill dealer.

Poterasu (above) opened the woman's "Little Yellow" studio project within 2009, and a permanent
space throughout may 2011; the actual nascent Anca Poterasu Gallery took component within art
Moskva four several weeks later. This kind of year's ViennaFair represented a new stepping-stone in
the woman's own irresistible rise, and the woman's innate gift pertaining to presentation -previously apparent in 2010, when the lady contributed to the Heroes Corner section about East
European art that I curated at the Budapest Artwork Fair -- ended up being once again throughout
evidence throughout Vienna.
Another gallery to make its aesthetic mark ended up being Triumph of Moscow. The Particular
understated elegance associated with their own booth, throughout schizophrenic distinction towards
the cluttered confusion they had offered up at art Moskva merely a fortnight before, bore the
particular unmistakably cool imprint regarding their International Curator Yana Smurova. This even
featured 2 of Dmitry Gutov's immensely hefty ironwork compositions, which usually demand a
degree throughout engineering for you to dangle effectively via flimsy partition walls. whether this
tour de force had been really worth your time and effort is an additional matter. Your versatile Gutov
continues in order to be welding these works pertaining to years. time to maneuver on.
The identical relates to Oksana Mas, whose painted eggs -- first employed within their thousands in
order to portray the Virgin Mary within St Sophia's Cathedral in Kiev in 2010 -- get runnied his or
her program and also now scramble her message. being displayed (by Ukraine gallery Mironova)
subsequent towards the most recent inanity through Ilya Chichkan doesn't magnifier assist either.
Gutov ended up being luckier -- positioned by simply Triumph alongside Pavel Brat's intriguing
paper as well as aluminum roundels resembling slices of andouille, and also Maxim Ksuta's line-like
photographs evocative regarding Chinese calligraphy (below left).
The some other outstanding Russian exhibitor had been RuArts, where I enjoyed Alexander
Zakharov's anarchic garden scenes (above right) along with Vita Buivid's subversive floral
nevertheless lifes. Figurative painting involving equal quality could be admired from Budapest's
Erika Deak (Attila Szcs) as well as Sofia's 0-GMS Gallery (Diana Machulina).
The Fair additionally offered an orgy associated with Geometric Abstraction, much associated with it

through Warsaw: by simply Dorota Buczkowska from Starter; Ma?gorzata Szymankiewicz from BWA;
along with Mateusz Szczypi?ski, with his witty psychedelic Crosswords (detail beneath right), at
Lokal 30. Zofia Kulik's black-and-white Patterns, beautifully displayed in the non-commercial section
of Artwork Moskva, were here on sale in Le Guern. These patterns look abstract via afar, however
turn out in order to consist associated with repeated photographic motifs -- knives, tulips and nudes
inside the illustration illustrated below.
There has been similarly monochrome appeal to the abstract works in Drdova (Prague) produced by
DJ-cum-Artist Daniel Vl?ek within tribute for you to his musically abstract compatriot Franti?ek
Kupka. Colorful abstract brushwork could probably be admired from Temnikova (Merike Estna)
along with Jecza Gallery involving Timi?oara (Genti Korini). Sounding the heavyweight, if slightly
anachronistic, note in the field ended up being Nadia Brykina, showing potent mid-century functions
by Marlen Spindler along with Vladimir Andreyenkov. Brykina's erudite approach to always be able
to post-war Russian artwork offers yielded a new string regarding superb catalogues -- the latest
devoted for the very stylized sculptures involving Igor Shelkovsky (on display in her Zurich gallery
via December 21).
The Fair's Eastern European section was furthermore strong in conceptual works. Vartai of Vilnius
led the way in which having a magnetic-tape curtain by simply ?ilvinas Kempinas (subject of the
startling demonstrate this summer in the Tinguely Museum throughout Basel). Nadine Gandy
coming from Bratislava displayed intriguingly artistic, single-sheet typescripts by simply Milan
Adam?iak, redolent associated with Soviet samezdat as well as produced inside 1969 after Adam?iak
had joined a hunger-strike in memory involving fellow-student Jan Palach, which burnt himself to
death in the wake with the Prague Spring.
Margit Valko of Kisterem (Budapest), time for the woman's favourite whites and off-whites after
getting a brief incursion into colour (green and black, anyway) using Tams Kaszs's chalk images
from Basel inside June, had the actual longest work within the fair: an astonishing 30-foot scroll by
Kamilla Szj. her town rival Ani Molnar, together with functions by Emese Benczur and Szilrd
Cseke, struggled to always be able to compete in a conceptualist domain which is not the woman's
forte. Nevertheless the woman's current gallery show in Budapest, involving witty wood carvings
through Gyrgy Szsz as well as Balzs Csepregi (whose ingenious Kossuth Utca will be pictured
below), is worth sailing down the Danube to see (through Nov. 29).

Hungary, using seven galleries, figured prominently at the fair, and furthermore the country's
Viennese profile has been elevated nonetheless further by simply an exhibition of young Hungarian
Artwork from your Erste Bank Collection in the Hungarian Embassy, hosted by Ambassador Balazs
Csuday along with Attila Ledenyi -- boss in the Budapest art Industry fair that will opens upon Nov.
27.
Pursuing your East European theme was an exhibition at the Vienna Albertina (through December
1st) dedicated to the tiny section of the particular Gazprombank Collection, begun throughout 2011
beneath your dynamic guidance regarding Marina Sitnina, and encompassing Russian art since the
1990s. Though this three-room overview was styled Dreaming Russia, your functions on display had
been essentially intellectual. His Or Her looks has been brought for the fore by Elsy Lahner's elegant
hanging, with its judicious contrast of colour as well as monochrome.
This appeal was firmest inside the long, narrow again room, where 1 wall has been lined with Yuri
Albert's Self-Portrait along with Closed Eyes (1995) -- an variety of vari-sized white panels covered in
Braille -- as well as the opposite one using Nikita Alexeyev's 2009 Impressions involving Areas &
Events: a new parade regarding square canvases alternating among abstract paintings along with
Russian inscriptions.

Hung within isolation, these whopping ensembles -- every comprising over 3 dozen pieces -- may
appear repetitive and self-indulgent. Here these people complemented one another exquisitely
whilst channelling focus towards the small back wall along with its Chuikov no Entry sign, granting
it the particular status of the secular icon: no mean feat for any work, painted throughout 2005, that
looks to end up being able to western eyes just like a tardy re-hash regarding a concept peddled
through French artist Jean-Pierre Raynaud since your 1970s.
Steps led down to a new darkened second room, having humanware its Sergey Bratkov Complete
Moon video-stills, Sergei Ogurtsov e-book sculptures, as well as Vadim Zakharov tile patterns
evoking characters from Gogol's Dead Souls. the primary hall featured seven works, including
Arseny Zhilyaev's Peace Our ideal -- any slogan spelt outside in Cyrillic letters formed through

angular strips involving wood -- and Alexander Djikia's Portrait involving Gagarin, drawn with a
giant red pencil shown to the ill-fated astronaut like a child.
But here, as elsewhere in Vienna this October, women predominated: Dasha Irincheyeva with the
girl "Empty Knowledge" bookshelf installation; Alexandra Paperno along with your ex artfully faded
grisaille floor-plans; as well as Olga Chernysheva having a series of woolly bob-hats, photographed
from behind to semi-abstract purpose as well as entitled, maybe meaningfully, "Waiting for the
Miracle."
Chernysheva, just like many conceptualists, gets the knack associated with coming up using clever
ideas, then worrying these to death being a dog using a bone. Here the actual hall's pillars and also
gentle arches salvaged rhythm via monotony -- spilling forth a split-frame succession associated with
super-sized Smarties.
Tubular belles: the sound associated with Vienna this fall.

all photographs Simon Hewitt

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