Public collections including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris Tate, London Albertina, Vienna Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Philadelphia Museum of Art Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC and Museum of Modern Art, New York. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2018, traveled to Tate Modern, London through 2019). Freedman Plaza, New York (2004) Vancouver Art Gallery (2005) “Les Pommes d’Adam,” Place Vendôme, Paris (2007, traveled to Hall Art Foundation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts in 2014) “Sit on My Chair, Lay on My Bed,” Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna (2008) “To Build A House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972–2008,” Baltimore Museum of Art (2008, traveled to Los Angeles County Museum of Art through 2009) Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2009) “White Elephant,” Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2009) “Auto-Theatre,” Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2010, traveled to Museo d‘Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples and Universalmuseum Joanneum, Austria, through 2011) Philadelphia Museum of Art (2012) and “Franz West: Where is my Eight?” Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna (2013, traveled to Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main and the Hepworth Wakefield, England, through 2014). His work has been a fixture in countless international survey exhibitions all over the world including “Burning,” Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille (2002) “Franzwestite: Franz West-Works 1973–2003,” Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2003) “We’ll Not Carry Coals,” Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2003) “Recent Sculptures,” Lincoln Center and Doris C. He studied at the Academy of Applied Arts from 1977 to 1982. Manipulating everyday materials and imagery in order to examine art’s relation to social experience, West revolutionized the interplay of concealment and exposure, action and reaction, both in and outside the gallery.įranz West was born in 1947 in Vienna, and died in 2012 in Vienna. Transposing the concepts engendered by these formative works, he explored sculpture increasingly through the framework of the ongoing dialogue between viewers and objects, while probing the internal aesthetic relations between sculpture and painting. These “ergonomically inclined” objects were actualized as artworks only when touched, held, worn, carried, or otherwise physically or cognitively engaged. In 1973, he began creating compact, portable, mixed media sculptures called Passstücke ( Adaptives ). Opposed to the existential intensity requisite to his performative forebears (such as Actionism), he produced work that was vigorous and imposing yet unbounded and buoyant.
Belonging to a generation of artists exposed to the Actionist and Performance Art of the 1960s and 70s, West instinctively rejected the idea of a passive relationship between artwork and viewer. Alongside these historical works is NYC-NAC (2000–08), a Paßstück installation that allows several viewers at a time to participate, new collages and posters, and a recent body of work that West refers to as “inside/outside sculptures” made from traditional papier-maché, then coated in fiberglass so that they can also be placed outdoors.From abstract and interactive sculpture to furniture and collage, Franz West’s oeuvre possesses a character that is at once lighthearted and deeply philosophical. The exhibition brings together a collection of rare and previously unexhibited Paßstück and collages from the early 1980s. This would comply with the intentions of the artist who is much more interested in the handling of his ‘objects’ than their formal completion.” Through use by the public, they could definitely become objects for behavioral research. Zdenek Felix said: “West’s adaptives are situated somewhere between the poles of body and psyche. Subsequently Paßstück has been translated as “adaptive” but this does not fully capture its original source as a technical term meaning “parts that fit into each other.” These early sculptures function as prosthetics for an intimate version of the extreme Actionist spectacles of the mid-seventies in Vienna. West maintained that the viewer must engage with, handle, the sculptures in order to fully experience their “ergonomic” nature.
In the early 1970s Franz West began making small-scale assemblages incorporating found materials such as cardboard, bandages, and wire, which he then covered with a coat of plaster and white paint. The exhibition includes sculptures and works on paper from the early 1980s to more recent works related to the central motif of the Paßstück in West’s art. Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition by Franz West.
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