Seminal works from the 1990s by Austrian sculptural artist Franz West (1947–2012) are currently on view at David Zwirner gallery in New York. On November 7, Whitewall attended a walkthrough of the exhibit led by Zwirner to hear about the significance this decade played on West’s creations. “The show features works from the 90s for two reasons: the first is that was the decade we had the privilege of first presenting his work, and the second is that was the decade in which most of the ideas that Franz developed really played out and came to fruition. We made an attempt to bring all these different ideas to this exhibition,” said Zwirner.
As we learned from the gallerist, the show not only catalogs an important time-period for the artist, but a pivotal time in Zwirner’s own career. He opened his gallery in 1993 with an exhibition of West’s work.
The last room of the gallery displays white aluminum sculptures originally created for the Austrian pavilion at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990, as well as West’s large-scale Lemure Heads, which were first shown at Documenta 9 in 1992. After seeing West’s works at Documenta, Zwirner traveled to Vienna to request to show his work for the gallery’s inaugural show. Their meeting was serendipitous in a way–due to a recession in the art market, two of the galleries representing West had just closed making it the perfect time to begin working with Zwirner. The artist had four subsequent shows with the gallery throughout the decade.
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