ART-PRESENTATION:Franz West
The exhibition of Franz West at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, deliberately makes no claim to being a comprehensive overview, but rather concentrates on three groups of works: Passtuecke, posters designs, and papier-mâché sculptures. Works made available by the Franz West Foundation are supplemented by selected pieces from European and American private collections.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Eva Presenhuber Archive
The basic theme in Franz West’s works is communication and interaction. In the early 1970s, West first presented his series of Passtuecke for the human body. Simple wearable structures made of papier mâché and plaster that function as extensions of limbs. According to West, the Passstueck represent neuroses or prostheses. The viewer becomes an interactive dialogue partner, which lends the sculptures a completeness in that the artwork takes on meaning through its communicative function. Some of the exhibited Passstuecke from the ’70s and ’80s are supplemented by videos in which people were filmed while wearing them. For many of his shows West designed a poster, turning it into an autonomous picture with painting and collage. The poster design refers to the exhibition and is at the same time a part of it. The name of the venue, title of the show, the date and other relevant information become the subject matter, and can be understood, like the adaptives, as a kind of interactive intellectual prosthesis. The viewer becomes a part of the picture subject, and is thus assigned an active role by the artist. For his medium-size, abstract sculptures he employed papier mâché, plaster, wire, wood and straw. To top them off he would splash on thick layers of white pigment. To Franz West sculpture was not a stationary block imbued with an aura, but rather a hinge, or wedge intended to produce a new connection between artist and public. For him art was free of the heraldry of the bourgeois format. Accordingly, for the papier mâché sculptures he converted stools, wooden chests, and tables into elements of the works of art, thereby incorporating into the work the notion of presentation in a direct and inextricable manner.
Info: Eva Presenhuber Galerie, Maag Areal, Zahnradstr. 21, Zurich, Duration: 28/2-23/5/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri: 10:00-18:00, Sat: 11:00-17:00, www.presenhuber.com
