FRANZ WEST

April 29 – June 4, 2004

Franz West was born in 1947 in Vienna, where he lives and works today.

Starting as a self-taught artist producing small-scale works on paper at the beginning of ‘70s, he has since engaged with abstract sculptural pieces, furniture, collage, installation, and lately, large-scale outdoor metal sculpture.

A recurrent theme in his oevre are his Pab- Stücke or Adaptives, oddly mishappen forms created to be experienced as objects for active physical and emotional use, rather than artworks destined to limited observation and reflection. What characterizes his work is it’s persistence of obtaining a range of participatory engagement. The artist negate his sculptures’ completion be declaring another artist’s work, quotations from literary, philosophical and psychological texts or the viewer’s interaction with the art object itself, as indispensable components of the work’s final outcome.

The fragmentary character of Franz West’s works, the primitive and scabrous nature of their surfaces and shapes as well as the casual layering and partial overlapping of loud hues, mark a relentless deflection from the ideal and challenge the viewer to a negotiation without intermediates for the identity of the contemporary work of art.

The gallery is open Tue-Fri 10:30-20:30, Sat 12:00-16:00