“Ever new waters flow on those who step into the same rivers, and ever new souls emerge from it.” The Austrian artist Franz West (born in 1947) chose this maxim after Heraclitus’s “Fragment” to accompany his “4 Larven (Lemurenköpfe)” (Four Larvae (Lemur Heads)). While “lemures” describes the souls of the dead wandering around in the dark of night in Roman mythology, the Viennese dialect also relates to shady characters with the word “lemurs.” Mounted above the Wienfluss, the lemur heads symbolize the ghosts of the past. Yet, as the artist says, there are always new talents on the other bank from that of the deceased and forgotten.

Text: Thomas Edlinger, Anja Lungstraße, in: Wem gehört die Stadt? Wien - Kunst im öffentlichen Raum seit 1968.