Heinz Gappmayr was born in 1925 and lives in Innsbruck. Since the early sixties, he has been artistically involved with words and images. Today, he is one of the most renowned representatives of visual poetry. His work occupies a completely independent position, which is nevertheless related to the concrete poetry (especially of Eugen Gomringer), from which it emerged, and to conceptual art. In his textual images, which belong to poetry as well as to the visual arts, Gappmayr is not concerned with subjective expression and direct confrontation with the reality that surrounds him. Rather, we are interested in the conditions under which reality can be experienced at all. The elementary, intersubjective conditions of seeing and thinking are his subject. He dissolves the ossified certainty of verbal and pictorial language and makes us aware of the emergence and changeability of sin and thus its relativity. In his textual images, ideas such as concepts, signs, numbers are exchanged with the visual, for example the white background as an imaginary space. No work can be definitively "deciphered", rather the viewer and reader sees himself integrated into a process of understanding that remains open.

For all their complexity, Gappmayr's works seem quite simple at first, as they contain only a few black signs, words or numbers isolated from each context on a white background. These refer to the categorical structure of reality: place, time, space, colors, number and measure. His works awaken an awareness of the complexity of the creation of meaning at the moment of crossing the boundaries between thinking, labeling, shen, associating and feeling.

For the first time in Switzerland, Heinz Gappmayr will set up a comprehensive exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zug, which will provide an insight into his large, diverse and at the same time concise oeuvre, which has been in the making for over thirty years. She has the entire museum at her disposal. Numerous individual works are then combined with text installations specially designed for the respective (indoor and outdoor) spaces. The project is part of a series of exhibitions on conceptual art at the Kunsthaus Zug (Antonio Calderara 1993, Giuseppe Spagnulo 1994, Gerard Wittner 1994, Raimund Girke 1995).