Textfragment von Konrad Bayer/Heinrich Dunst
Ohne Titel

Heinrich Dunst

Textfragment von Konrad Bayer/Heinrich Dunst
Ohne Titel, 2006

Artwork text

A hybrid work by Heinrich Dunst in the entrance area at Galerie nächst Sankt Stephan serves as the ‚login‘ for the exhibition Rift/Gap/Hinge A, presenting the theme of the exhibition on the 2nd floor in metaphoric terms and shown by Dunst in his double function as both artist and curator. Dunst began by selecting a page from an older edition of Konrad Bayer’s 1 der sechste sinn (The Sixth Sense), which he had enlarged and reproduced as a digital print on a canvas-like fabric. He added two differently sized MDF panels to this, on which the words “metaphor” (larger panel) and “color no.:” (smaller panel) are written. The excerpt from Bayer’s novel concerns the passage where “nina”, the female protagonist, tells the first person narrator “goldenberg” to put on his glasses so that he can read better. This is followed by a passage of text underneath which individual letters can just be deciphered. Here, where the text becomes (almost) illegible and the lettering tips into ‘visuality’, a change occurs in the form of arrangement showing that “disjunction” (Dunst) between the media that is reflected in the structure of the exhibition to follow. There is no end to what could be said about der sechste sinn. It is a key work by Konrad Bayer, an implicitly autobiographical novel itself left as a fragment, a book he was working on until his suicide in 1964. In reference to the appropriate passages of text superimposed on one another, Bayer (Shandyyesquely) only asked for an arrangement of “illegible pseudo-typography” without suggesting any particular quotation. Dunst used an early Rowohlt edition of the novel with the ‘misprinted’ beginning, while in a later version a French excerpt from Locus Solus by Raymond Russel was taken.2 ----------------------------------- 1 Konrad Bayer 1932 Vienna/A – 1964 Vienna/A 2 Dunst, Heinrich; Pamminger, Walter, ed. Riss/Lücke/Scharnier A. Texts by Dunst, Heinrich; Pamminger, Walter; Buchmann, Sabeth; Grzonka, Patricia; Madlener, Elisabeth et al. Wien: Galerie nächst St. Stephan, 2010.