Lisa de Cohen with Adaptive by Franz West, 1983. Photo by Rudolf Polansky
David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Austrian artist Franz West (1947–2012) on view at the gallery’s Paris location. Following the major retrospective that was on view at the Centre Pompidou in 2018 and subsequently traveled to Tate, London, this exhibition surveys a range of West’s sculptures, works on paper, and installations produced between the late 1970s and early 2000s.
A concurrent exhibition, Franz West: Echolalia, presents an immersive installation from 2010 and is on view at the gallery’s 533 West 19th Street location in New York through April 15, 2023. Together, these shows mark the tenth presentation of the artist’s work at David Zwirner since 1993, when his solo exhibition Investigations of American Art inaugurated the gallery’s program.
During his lifetime, West presented several solo exhibitions at David Zwirner, in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998 (with Heimo Zobernig), and 1999. The gallery further organized an exhibition of the artist’s early work in 2004, a small survey in 2009, a show in 2014 that focused on work from the 1990s—which was accompanied by a catalogue published by David Zwirner Books, with essays by Eva Badura-Triska, Veit Loers, and Bernhard Riff—and, more recently, a 2019 overview of the artist's works in London.
Image: Installation view, Franz West, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023
David Zwirner a le plaisir d’annoncer une exposition d’œuvres de Franz West (1947-2012) dans les espaces de la galerie à Paris. Faisant suite à la rétrospective d’envergure qui s’est tenue au Centre Pompidou en 2018, puis à la Tate Modern de Londres, cette exposition regroupe plusieurs sculptures, œuvres sur papier et installations produites par l’artiste autrichien entre la fin des années 1970 et le début des années 2000.
Au même moment à New York, sous le titre Franz West: Echolalia, la galerie présente dans son espace du 533 West 19th Street, jusqu’au 15 avril, une installation immersive réalisée en 2010. Ces deux expositions conjointes marquent la dixième présentation du travail de Franz West par David Zwirner depuis 1993, année où l’exposition personnelle de l’artiste, Investigations of American Art, coïncidait avec l’inauguration de la galerie.
Du vivant de l’artiste, cinq expositions personnelles se sont déroulées chez David Zwirner, en 1993, en 1994, en 1996, en 1998 (avec Heimo Zobernig) et en 1999. La galerie a également organisé une exposition des premières œuvres de l’artiste en 2004, puis en 2009. En 2014, le travail mené dans les années 1990 a fait l’objet d’une exposition et d’un catalogue édité par David Zwirner Books, incluant les contributions d’Eva Badura-Triska, Veit Loers et Bernhard Riff. Plus récemment, en 2019, la galerie de Londres a accueilli une sélection d’œuvres retraçant l’ensemble de sa carrière.
Lisa de Cohen with Adaptive by Franz West, 1983. Photo by Rudolf Polansky
Emerging in the early 1970s, Franz West developed a unique aesthetic that engaged equally high and low reference points and often privileged social interaction as an intrinsic component of his work. While he was known primarily as a sculptor, his body of work incorporated drawing, collage, video, and installation, using papier-mâché, furniture, cardboard, plaster, found imagery, and other diverse materials.
In Paris, a significant and rarely seen group of the artist’s early Passstücke (Adaptives)—sculptural forms that were intended to be handled by the viewer in a manner of his or her choosing—open the exhibition.
Franz West, Passstück (Adaptive), c. 1983 (detail)
“Seemingly negligible or insubstantial, imperfect and modest, these sculptures are resolutely indefinable in terms of their form and anti-modern in the way they reject the autonomy of the artwork.”
—Christine Macel, director, Musée des Arts Décoratifs
Installation view, Franz West, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023
People and Passstücke. Photographer unknown
Begun in the mid-1970s, these roughly hewn, abstract sculptural forms are intended to be handled by the viewer who “adapts” the works to their physical being. Many of the forms are reminiscent of everyday objects, allowing the user to make loose associations while still handling the objects in an unconditioned way.
“West's Adaptives are intended to be actually worn or held by the viewer, thereby provoking maladroit, inorganic contortions of the body of the person who has endeavored to pick one up and engage with it. In such an instance … the ordinarily passive viewer is momentarily transformed into an active participant, whose ‘neuroses become visible’ through the resulting engagement.”
—Alison M. Gingeras, curator and writer
From the very beginning, West encouraged people to handle the Adaptives in different surroundings, documenting this in photographs and, as of the early 1980s, also in film and video. Some of these images were often used as material for his collages.
Installation view, Franz West, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023
Throughout his career, West made works on paper that shared the irreverent aesthetic and humor of his sculptures and installations. In his earliest drawings from the 1970s, such as those on view in Paris, West depicted figures in enigmatic scenes often set against backgrounds that are empty or characterized by domed or curvilinear architectural elements. These ornamental motifs were inspired by Turkish baths that had impressed West during his travels, as well as his visits to the Vienna studio of painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
“Bringing to mind the random way in which images operate in everyday life (billboards on the highway, magazines in the doctor’s office, news on television), the [picture-walls] flicker with data that the viewer is left to assemble in a game of compression. Here multiple elements become a common ‘object’.”
—Darsie Alexander, chief curator, The Jewish Museum
Franz West in front of a wall of his early drawings, 1973
Installation view, Franz West, Austrian Pavilion, 44th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 1990
For his 1990 solo exhibition at the XLIV Venice Biennale, West revisited his Passstücke, executing a group of eleven works in painted aluminum. By reworking his own artistic past for this important show—one of his first internationally visible solo presentations—West, in his characteristically sly way, disrupted his own career trajectory.
The 1990s proved critical in the progression of the idiosyncratic style for which West is still known today. A key development from this period includes an expanded use of color in his papier-mâché forms, which resulted in dynamic, frequently interactive installations that helped to redefine the ways in which art is experienced. Additionally, West continued to subvert the notion of the pedestal during this time, while also repurposing and rearranging existing artworks as a means of commenting on the fluidity—as well as the arbitrariness—of their meaning.
“[West’s] sense for color shifted as he started to paint his own works and, by the mid-1990s, most of the papier-mâché were riotously polychromatic.… He would pour and paint pretty indiscriminately, turning the object over in the process. Photographs and films capture him with a telephone in one hand and a long brush in the other, painting away in a state of productive distraction, but somehow achieving a mess of color that felt just right.”
—Mark Godfrey, art historian, critic, and curator
In its current grouping, the present work was first exhibited in the bookstore of the Dia Center for the Arts, New York in 1994. For this installation, West devised typically unconventional pedestals that also functioned as bookshelves, thus mirroring the work's surroundings and reflecting the importance of literature and philosophy in his oeuvre.
“The Adaptives, which had really ceased to be anything of the kind, became authentic Legitimate Sculptures, which … do not so much represent sculptures as sculptural stations. At the same time, he also modified the function of the pedestal as a dry white cube element, transferring it, as it were, from the realm of ideality to that of the intellectual worker’s consumption habits, using it to store books, records, and alcohol.”
—Veit Loers, curator
Installation view, Franz West, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023
Franz West, Homepage, 2000 (detail)
Franz West, Homepage, 2000 (detail)
Franz West, Homepage, 2000 (detail)
Franz West, Homepage, 2000 (detail)
West continued working on paper throughout the 1990s and 2000s. These drawings and collages, which were frequently presented in dilapidated or handmade frames, were used to question the societal conventions around a range of topics—including sexual mores, art historical movements and styles, and the mass media. They took a variety of formats, including simple line drawings, painted-over ads, cut-out figures collaged into seemingly bizarre and incongruous situations, and posters for West's own exhibitions.
While interactive work remained characteristic of his practice, West became increasingly interested in creating what he began to call “Legitimate Sculpture” in the 1990s. An important early outgrowth of this notion was West's Lemurenköpfe (Lemure Heads). West imagined his Lemures, the most figurative sculptures within his vast body of work, wailing at passersby and would sometimes even invite people to leave notes with their wishes in the sculptures.
“The guiding principle of his art was that it should be dialogical—meaning that none of his pieces should be seen as a statement, let alone an assertion in and of itself. The works were always intended to be incentives for dialogue, which could take place on various levels, be it physical, mental, psychological, or intellectual. Consequently, West’s pieces frequently served as starting points for his own responses and further developments.”
—Eva Badura-Triska, curator, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna
Franz West’s Lemure Heads
By the late 1980s, furniture comprised an important part of West's practice as means of further upending traditional exhibition models and privileging social interaction. The present work comprises a divan intended for visitors to sit on and a sculptural form that holds several glasses. West frequently accompanied his installations with text and for this work, he provided the following instructions: “If you want to take a seat, you should remove your clothing as far as possible, but at least your shoes. A museum guard will give you a glass of curaçao every hour, on the hour. However, don’t serve yourself!”
“With these installations West moved beyond traditional concepts of sculpture and towards a thorough engagement with public space and a redefinition of the function of art. West now encouraged the visitor to ‘get onto the plinth yourself,’ enabling the engagement of viewer and object which he had sought since the Adaptives.”
—Neal Benezra, former director, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
“To a certain extent West has created his own, highly personal territory.… In his deliberate opposition to the aesthetic, psychological and physical ways in which the work affects the viewer, West retains his unorthodox position as a sculptor of in-between forms.”
—Robert Fleck, art historian and curator
On view in New York: Franz West’s Echolalia
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