Josef Straus’ artistic practice develops from the written word.

In his work, he connects text and object; the texts are characterized by typographic arrangements and the use of gaps, as well as by a fast, playful writing style. He combines everyday urban scenes with personal perspectives and literary motifs.

The publication is linked to the exhibition at the Secession and takes up a literary and cinematic motif: the artist as observer and recorder of his surroundings. It refers to Robert Bresson’s film Quatre nuits d’un rêveur (1971) and its literary source, White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The starting point is a specific working situation in which Josef Strau writes a text for an album commissioned by Marina Rosenfeld and spends several days with her and Stefan Tcherepnin listening to music and discussing the work of other composers. The resulting descriptions and notes are transferred in fragmentary form into both the exhibition and the publication.