Opening: 15 Jan. 2015

Duration: 16 Jan. – 14 Mar. 2015

Artists and authors

Assunta Abd El Azim Mohamed / Christine Lavant, Hugo Canoilas / Malcolm Lowry, Clemens Denk / Friederike Mayröcker, Petra Egg / Julio Cortázar, Simon Häussle / F. Scott Fitzgerald, Barbara Kapusta / Audre Lorde, Ute Müller / Gertrude Stein, Annelies Oberdanner / Birgit Schwaner, Bernhard Rappold / Jörg Fauser, Dorothea Trappel / Ernst Jandl, Jakub Vrba / Thomas Bernhard, Flora Watzal / Marianne Fritz

Concept: Ingeborg Strobl

Information is omnipresent, knowledge is available at any time. Simultaneousness, networking, multitasking and the pressure for results seem unavoidable at many if not all levels. Deeper analysis, contemplative engagement, the exclusive focus on one subject are becoming ever more difficult, if they do not directly serve personal positioning in an all-determining competition. Time is money, efficiency is indispensable.

Language, literature, poetry, narration, novels – for artists, too, it is becoming a frivolous luxury to read literary texts if it does not take place in the context of project-related informative research, without the pressure of marketing, without immediate necessity. Text and book, not text and internet, not text and Kindle – another luxury of attention. To hold an "analogue" book in one’s hands: the weight, the haptic feel of page-turning, the paper, the odour – the cosmos of production and design.

In this sense, the exhibition lesen [Literatur] [reading [literature]] focuses on the books with texts by twelve authors read and selected by twelve artists. Twelve short text quotations in the original language form the basis of each artistic work conceived for the exhibition. Attempts at an atmospheric approach, not appropriation and not illustration. Related sounds, contacts regarding content, concrete, abstract, poetic. Connections that cannot be didactically decoded.

The selected books lie on a book table for viewing and encouragement. The graphic artist and font designer Willi Schmid is responsible for the graphic design of the text quotations for the exhibition display and the catalogue. In addition, in the catalogue, alongside articles by the artists there is an essay by the writer and musician Martin Kubaczek.