Box Office Poison | Exhibition Opening
Line up: Olga Abeleva, Max Lester, Hyo Young Chu

Join us for the opening of the latest exhibition at puntWG, with a performance of B for Bravado by Isabel Legate at 21.00. 

Exhibition opening times: 1 August until 17 August 2026.
Open Saturday, Sunday and by appointment from 14.00 to 18.00

Part of the puntWG Open Call series

The room is massive, which is why they hire so many of us, because there needs to be enough hands to close all the doors. The building is falling apart, and it feels apt to the decaying aristocracy of Opera in the West, the crowd dwindling, guests showing up in flip-flops, regular guests getting older and older until they just don’t show up any more.

It would be more expensive to repair the Opera than to erect another, so great cracks rut through the reinforced concrete of the walls, and big weeping stains spread across the carpets – repurposed upholstery from the U-Bahn circa late 80s West Germany – so everything has a Cold War maniac casino vibe. The grand hall still impresses, shaped like a gigantic toilet or slumped Guggenheim, seats hugging stage in a slightly bulging U. I’m watching from the nosebleeds, but like I tell the guests, this is the best seat in the house – the view where you can see both stage and orchestra pit – seats so far from the expressions of the singers they abstract to gesture, saying: this is sadness, fear, joy, love, murder, betrayal, heartbreak, war – the actors remaking the world in their faces big enough for the back of the house to see.

My day shift cleaning the hotel doesn’t afford the same opacity, and I’m going up in the elevator with my mop, and this guy says to me that I’m a really good maid, but he hasn’t seen me work at all – stopping in the door frame when I’m making a bed to say, in my next life I will definitely be a woman, and I will definitely do your type of work! And I look at him, and can’t help but say, so you’re going to hell?