Franz West
Corona, 2002
Lacquer and aluminum, 196 ⅞ × 275 9/16 × 275 9/16 inches (500 × 700 × 700 cm)
Franz West Sisyphos I, 2002
Papier-mâché, Styrofoam, cardboard, lacquer, and acrylic 53 × 43 3/8 × 63 inches (134.6 × 110.1 × 160 cm) 2 views
Franz West Sisyphos VI, 2002
Paper-mache, Styrofoam, cardboard, lacquer and acrylic 41 5/16 × 49 3/16 × 69 11/16 inches (105 × 125 × 177 cm) 2 views
Franz West
Untitled (Sisyphos), 2002
Collage and oil paint mounted on canvas, 78 ¾ × 59 1/16 inches (200 × 150 cm)
Franz West
Untitled (Sylvere Lotringer...), 2002
Collage and oil paint mounted on canvas, 50 ½ × 54 inches (128.3 × 137.2 cm)
Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Franz West. The exhibition will feature various aspects of West’s work including monumental outdoor sculpture, as well as large papier-mâché works and collages.
Franz West's sculptural works continue in the spirit of the French based art informel movement of the 1950s–’60s, wherein traditional forms of abstraction were rejected, as well as an evolution to the ritualistic activities of the Viennese Aktionisten group of the 1960s/70s, which incorporated an aggressive interchange between the artist and artwork in a performance setting.
“West delights in precisely this ghost of semantics in informel, in a reference to Leonardo da Vinci's treatise on painting when he describes the way that we discover ‘recognizable’ features in even the most amorphous structures. The traditional mode of display draws attention to the curious way in which people deal with art, and by being presented in groups and ensembles, a rhetorical device to emphasize the point, attention is also focused on curious nature of the sculpture themselves.”
—Melitta Kliege, curator, Neues Museum Nürnberg
For this exhibition Franz West has created Corona and Dorit, two monumental sculptures suitable for outdoors. Constructed out of enameled painted aluminum, West magnifies basic shapes and simple forms, creating improbable fantasies for a landscape. Franz West's sculptural works incorporate an ongoing series called Passstücke, translated as adaptives, in which the viewers are encouraged to pick up the work and experience how it fits and adapts to their bodies. West also explores the incorporation of furniture into his art and installations. As a result, a reflective and meditative experience is casually urged onto the viewers by having them engage, sit and relax within the sculpture. What appears to be abstract in West's sculpture is rather the sculptural description of abstraction. This irony is fully reached in the collages; wherein the normalcy of appropriated advertising vocabulary is subverted by psychological, sexual and absurdist subtexts all brought together as painted representational art.
A fully illustrated catalogue including an introduction by Melitta Kliege will accompany the exhibition.
