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Today 81-year-old Heinz Gappmayr ranks among the most important
representatives of visual poetry. The visibility of writing
plays a particular role in his works and this visibility is
only inherent in objects that have spatial dimensions. Since
1975 the artist has elaborated his "Raumtexte",
hence spatial texts dealing in a special way with spatial
conditions and readability under these conditions.
"All these Raumtexte [spatial texts] are different aspects
of the relations to the precious content of the library as
well as its keen and subtle architecture." (H. Gappmayr)
The word ECHO, which is fixed to the eastern and western exterior
wall of the library, is mirrored on both sides of the letter
O, thus its regular spelling is altered. This graphical intervention
and the size of the letters evoke the particular significance
of perceptibility in advertising, where messages have to be
readable, or rather perceptible from a spatial distance. Behind
these walls one has to get much closer to the letters in physical
space, because they are hidden in sides put on top of each
other. In an almost paradoxical manner this inscription refers
to the building`s interior space, as it overcomes the separating
feature of the wall and thus becomes permeable for ambiguous
readings.
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Three lettered lines composed of fragments of the word "zeit"
[time] are presented on the front wall facing the entrance
hall. Although no letter is complete, the repetition of the
word and the regularity of the characters enable us to fill
in the missing parts of each character in our minds. This
effort of deciphering reminds of the surprising beginning
of reading - when lines are turning into characters. For Gappmayr
the reading process is the precondition for combining imagined
and visible elements in written characters. Moreover, reading
as a process enables us to experience time, which is at the
bottom of all visibility of the world`s phenomena.
In a movement from reading to comprehending one can make out
three names of stars respectively on the walls to the left
and to the right in the library`s entrance hall, which
are ten metres high. From these names the one or other is
familiar but in most cases one can only guess that these are
ancient Greek or Arabic appellations of stars. "Yet exactly
this moment of strangeness and the temporal distance to the
time when these names came into existence is a central theme
here - and, at the same time, the charm of the contrast
between language and heavenly body." (H. Gappmayr)
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