Heimo Zobernig - ohne Titel

Heimo Zobernig
ohne Titel
1992
Typewriter, ball pen on paper
29.7 x 21 cm
Ed 19/30

Heimo Zobernig (*1958 in Austria, living and working in Vienna) works across a wide range of media—alongside sculpture and installation, he engages in painting and drawing, as well as performance, video, and architectural interventions.

In this case, the work is a text piece, more precisely a poem about the Kunstverein - a German-speaking model of a non-profit art association-, which Zobernig wrote in 1992 and produced in an edition of 30 copies using a typewriter and ballpoint pen. Like many of the artist’s works, it bears the title ohne Titel and exemplifies a dry, pointed reduction, without forgoing an equally dry and pointed sense of humor.

Published by the Salzburger Kunstverein, the paper work appeared in the same year as the symposium “Kunstverein. The Institution in Context” , at which the artist was invited to participate in a talk, and one year prior to his solo exhibition at the Salzburger Kunstverein. 

We can offer number 19/30. This number has neither been framed nor exhibited to date and is in very good condition. 

The lines of the poem rhyme in German, a quality that the following English translation is unfortunately unable to maintain: 

What comes to mind
on the subject of the Kunstverein:
Associations want to nurture something,
in this case art and fun,
which sometimes leads to the fact
that a crisis shakes everything up.
So people then sit down together
and get their heads heated in the process.
Politics, art, and culture
in galleries and museums only—
everyone is eager and industrious,
I myself am already over thirty.
In galleries you can buy everything,
in museums you have to walk endlessly.
But the Kunstverein,
it invites you—
to be with friends and with art.
It is not too shy
even for the avant-garde.
A café is usually attached,
where artists sit tirelessly
and discuss—
what else might there be to try in art?
After all, one wants to be modern in some way
in the Kunstverein.