Heinrich Dunst
sink
Artist book, 2024
20.4 × 27.5 cm, 104 pages
New release
Details:
Softcover
20.4 × 27.5 cm
104 pages
64 illustrations in color
German / English
Edited by:
Sandro Droschl, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, 2024
With contributions by:
Kolja Reichart, Sandro Droschl
Concept:
Heinrich Dunst
Felix Gaudlitz
Alexander Nussbaumer
Photography:
kunst-dokumentation.com, Manuel Carreon Lopez
Graphic design:
FONDAZIONE Europa
Publisher:
saxpublishers, Vienna
ISBN:
978−3−200−09559−5
Thanks to:
Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna
Ben Lerner
Text
Heinrich Dunst is an Austrian conceptual artist. His works reflect profoundly on the function and conditions of art and its production in the context of current media and social challenges.
A recurring motif is the question of how works of art can be appropriately defined. The title of the exhibition sink, which precedes the artist’s book, suggests an examination of the complex relationship between language and image as well as the possibility of transferring an object into different forms. In terms of a contemporary definition of art, Dunst is particularly concerned with the non-translatability between language and visuality.
In his contribution to the catalog, Kolja Reichert, curator at Museum K21 in Düsseldorf, discusses the role and significance of art in the context of the digital media landscape as well as current social conditions. According to him, in today’s digital society, works of art are reduced more to their message or position than to their own multi-layered complexity. Art should not only function as a medium for conveying opinions or perspectives, but also offer space for ambiguity and ambivalence, which is where its actual potential lies. In contrast, Heinrich Dunst’s practice, which questions current media conditions and challenges viewers to create their own connections and interpretations, is thus offering a space for reflection and critical debate. The precisely conceived artist’s book sink seeks to translate this demand for a critical visuality into an image.
Artists
Participating artists
Heinrich Dunst
Among many others we allow us to highlight following shows: nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna (2019, 2013), House of Art, České Budějovice (2018), KOW, Berlin (2016, 2014), Kunstverein Schwaz (2015), Ludwig Forum, Aachen (2015), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2014) and Secession, Vienna (2014).
Sandro Droschl
is founding director and curator of the institution HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark. From 2012 to 2020 he directed the Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien. Since 2000 he worked as curator, then also as director for the Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz, besides as guest curator at other institutions. He curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and edited over 30 publications. Droschl made a study iregulare, “Body. Media. Art,” with art (Isabelle Graw, Free Class), philosophy, journalism and medicine at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, University of Vienna and London Guildhall University.
Kolja Reichert
is an art critic and program curator with a focus on discourse at the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn. He studied philosophy and modern German literature at the Freie Universität Berlin and has taught at the Städelschule, Frankfurt, the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, Universität der Künste Berlin, and the Institut Art Basel, among others. Reichert has worked as a (cultural) editor for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Spike Art Quarterly and has published countless essays and reviews in magazines and newspapers such as Die Zeit, Spex, Weltkunst, art in america, and frieze. Recent books include Kann ich das auch? 50 Questions for Art (Klett-Cotta 2022), and Crypto-Art. Digital Image Cultures (Wagenbach 2021). For his achievements as a critic, Kolja Reichert received the Prize for Art Criticism of the German Art Associations and Art Cologne in 2012, and the Will Grohmann Prize of the Berlin Academy of Arts in 2018.