2010 Thirteen Years of the Star-Revue 2023 Special Section starts page 11 STAR REVUE

Scott Pfaffman on Gregor Wiest and the Wall Gallery

Iwas invited by a friend to attend, on the evening of May 19th, a banquet to honor the work of German artist Gregor Wiest at The Wall Gallery located at 41 Seabring Street in Red Hook. The Wall Gallery is two years old and has had 5 exhibitions. It was established by myself and Franz Landspersky, two compatible Red Hook neighbors in a former accounting office and studio across the street from the NYFD Engine 202, Ladder Company 101.

The exhibition had previously enjoyed a very successful opening night which featured the extraordinary ensemble known as Synchol. Several hundred people attended that evening and celebrated the results of Wiest’s month-long artist residency: With material quickly procured and a handful of preparatory drawings in place a group of 12 large drawings and 2 sculptures were made in the gallery space. A major body of work forged in a few very busy short weeks. It was, I am told ,a wonder filled evening. But this night was set aside for a smaller gathering of artists and friends of the artists assembled to appreciate, perhaps more contemplatively, Gregors’s work. And enjoy a meal together. The director, Franz Landspersky, refers to these regular pot luck dinners as “artists banquets” to imply a feast of all the senses. And so it was.

Spaetzle and cabbage

Conversations overheard concerned film, politics, european history, philosophy, local history, economics, misconceptions, propaganda, and that’s just a partial list of what I was able to under- stand since a good deal of the chatter was in German. Goat stew, roast pork, spaetzle, cabbage, beets, roasted cauliflower, ample beer and wine, a table set for 20, the kind of beautiful dinner that can only be accomplished by the offerings of random and uniquely talented guests.While we enjoyed each other’s company I began to feel the artwork exert its influence. And to me the conversations seem to grow more focused as the subjects gain clarity. Or perhaps I had simply fallen into the striking context of the art.

Wiest is the type of artist that occupies the wild periphery of domestic culture. Self sufficient in every way, Wiest carves his path into our visual arena with an intensity that seems drawn from some deep elemental force. Facing these works requires an act of affirmation.

Confronting them without this commitment would be a tragic error. The viewer will have avoided the messages in this work and be the poorer for it. In all of these works most prominent is the strange viscous black pigment applied masterfully in numerous ways to collaged pieces of white translucent paper, They create an architectural assembly of images within landscapes which are populated with distorted figures and a collection of marks and gestures the origins of which seem to reside within those same elemental forces that propel and reinforce these pieces. Perhaps the images are the vulcanized remains or the brilliant birth of a unique alternative visual energy, one that sometimes haunts and sometimes coddles our sensations. And like most really great art these

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