About
From abstract and interactive sculpture to furniture and collage, Franz West’s oeuvre possesses a character that is at once lighthearted and deeply philosophical. 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. 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. In 1973, he began creating compact, portable, mixed media sculptures called Passstücke (Adaptives). These “ergonomically inclined” objects were actualized as artworks only when touched, held, worn, carried, or otherwise physically or cognitively engaged. 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. 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.
Franz West was born in 1947 in Vienna, and died in 2012 in Vienna. He studied at the Academy of Applied Arts from 1977 to 1982. 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. 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). A major retrospective of his work was held at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2018, traveled to Tate Modern, London through 2019).
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. He was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 54th Biennale di Venezia in 2011.
Photo: courtesy Archiv Franz West and Estate Franz West
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Website
Exhibitions
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Installation
Franz West
November 16, 2023–March 15, 2024
Gagosian Shop, London
A selection of paper-based works and furniture by Franz West is on view at the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade. Installed throughout both floors of the space, the exhibited works are imbued with the Austrian artist’s riotous fusion of sincerity and absurdity. West’s series of drawings, posters, and collages, conjured from photographs, tawdry advertisements, and soft porn, possess the same raucous aesthetic and wit as his plaster and papier-mâché sculptures and his elegant pieces of functional furniture, which further expand the relationship between art and audience.
Franz West installation at Gagosian Shop, London, November 16, 2023–March 15, 2024. Artwork © Archiv Franz West, © Estate Franz West. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
In Conversation
Oscar Murillo and Ben Luke
On Franz West
Tuesday, October 10, 2023, 6pm
Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London
Join Gagosian for a conversation between Oscar Murillo and arts writer, critic, and broadcaster Ben Luke in conjunction with Franz West: Papier, the gallery’s presentation of paper-based works by Franz West (1947–2012) at Frieze Masters 2023. The pair will discuss Murillo’s collaboration in selecting the works on view, which date from the 1970s through the 2010s, as well as his personal experiences meeting the late artist in London in the late 2000s and the enduring impact West continues to have on artists today.
Left: Oscar Murillo. Photo: Stuart Leech, Turner Contemporary, courtesy the artist. Right: Ben Luke
Art Fair
Frieze Masters 2023
Franz West: Papier
October 12–15, 2023, booth E01
Regent’s Park, London
www.frieze.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in the 2023 edition of Frieze Masters with a presentation of paper-based works by Franz West that spans his career from the early 1970s through the 2010s, conceived in association with the Estate of Franz West and through the initiative of the Franz West Privatstiftung. Chosen in collaboration with artist Oscar Murillo, the selection in London highlights West’s irreverence and ingenuity.
Collaging and overpainting imagery from print media, West disrupted the pictorial continuity of his sources and confounded expectations between public display and subjective experience. Blending abstraction and figuration, West’s works on paper exhibit an absurdist wit, with some exploring a mischievous vulgarity through an emphasis on bodily functions and erotic themes.
Gagosian’s booth at Frieze Masters 2023, featuring work by Franz West. Artwork © Archiv Franz West, © Estate Franz West. Photo: Lucy Dawkins
Museum Exhibitions
Closing this Week
El eco de Picasso
Through March 30, 2024
Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain
museopicassomalaga.org
Organized as part of Picasso Celebration 1973–2023, a series of international exhibitions and events commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, The Echo of Picasso focuses on his influence on twentieth-century art. The exhibition places Picasso’s practice in dialogue with work by more than fifty artists, including Francis Bacon, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Willem de Kooning, Thomas Houseago, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Richard Prince, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Cy Twombly, Tom Wesselmann, and Franz West.
Installation view, El eco de Picasso, Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain, October 2, 2023–March 30, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Rebecca Warren, © Richard Prince. Photo: Pablo Asenjo, courtesy Museo Picasso Málaga
On View
Franz West in
When Forms Come Alive
Through May 6, 2024
Hayward Gallery, London
www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Spanning over sixty years of contemporary sculpture, When Forms Come Alive highlights ways in which artists draw on familiar experiences of movement, flux, and organic growth. Inspired by sources ranging from a dancer’s gesture to the breaking of a wave, from a flow of molten metal to the interlacing of a spider’s web, the works by twenty-one international artists conjure fluid and shifting realms of experience. Work by Franz West is included.
Installation view, When Forms Come Alive, Hayward Gallery, London, February 7–May 6, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Nairy Baghramian; © Archiv Franz West, © Estate Franz West. Photo: Jo Underhill, courtesy Hayward Gallery
Closed
Paraventi
Folding Screens from the 17th to 21st Centuries
October 26, 2023–February 22, 2024
Fondazione Prada, Milan
www.fondazioneprada.org
This exhibition investigates the histories and semantics of folding screens by tracing trajectories of cross-pollination between the East and the West, processes of hybridization between different art forms and functions, collaborations between designers and artists, and the emergence of new works. Paraventi presents more than seventy folding screens as well as a selection of contemporary projects, commissioned specifically for this show, by more than fifteen international artists. Work by Francis Bacon, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Jean Prouvé, Ed Ruscha, Cy Twombly, and Franz West is included.
Franz West, Paravents, 2010, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany © Archiv Franz West, © Estate Franz West. Photo: Wolfgang Günzel
Closed
Albert Oehlen
“Grandi quadri miei con piccoli quadri di altri”
September 5, 2021–February 20, 2022
Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
masilugano.ch
In this exhibition, Albert Oehlen: “Big Paintings by Me with Small Paintings by Others”, select works from Oehlen’s personal art collection are on view alongside some of his most significant paintings. In staging this large-scale exhibition, Oehlen aims to make relationships perceptible between his artworks and those by artists whose practices he has long admired. Work by Richard Artschwager, Willem de Kooning, Duane Hanson, Mike Kelley, and Franz West, among others, is included.
Albert Oehlen, Untitled, 1997/2005 © Albert Oehlen. Photo: Lothar Schnepf