“the day i spent with the architect gerngross who loves to organize large exhibitions in the naschmarkt area turned into an odyssey. his herculean achievement (ulysses set out, at least in the divine comedy, for the pillars of hercules) of mounting this exhibition in such a hurry is why this column, which would like to be positioned in public space, was created for ulysses gerngross.” (Franz West, March 2004)

„My impression is that no monuments have been erected to persons for quite some time. I don’t think it’s important whether the person honored by the memorial is renowned all over the world. It should be someone like the saint of the neighborhood, so to speak. Which, I think, is the case with Gerngross. A naïve passer-by may regard the column as a monument to the nearby department store – a coincidence that makes the issue all the more telling.”
(Franz West, 2007)

Franz West conceived the 564-centimeter-high stele together with the architect Heidulf Gerngross, to whom it is dedicated. The stacked garbage cans are cast in concrete and painted with white road marking paint. They evoke Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame, whose protagonists live in garbage cans, but may also be read as an ironic comment on Viennese Actionism. The inscription on the egg at the top is mirror-inverted “so that the chick in it can read it” – Gerngross sees urban development as interior architecture which, like a chick in an egg, starts from inside and extends to the outside. West’s Gerngross-Säule (Gerngross Column) also pays tribute to Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column.

The column was developed as part of the art and architecture program “cultural sidewalk – Gumpendorf 2000”: Originally, Franz West’s column was to be installed at the foot of the stairs for only four weeks. The temporary project became a permanent installation at the municipal authorities’ request.