FRANZ WEST

Born in 1947 in Vienna, Austria
Lives and works in Vienna, Austria

Since the mid-sixties, Franz West has gained recognition for his boundary-blurring sculpture installations, inviting the spectators to interact with his artwork. He has made different types of works, always questioning the role of the viewer, the boundaries between art and design, the ambiguities of form and non-form, the role of the museum in its subversion of the object. One of his first series of works in the early seventies, called “Adaptives” (“Passstücke”), was meant to be picked up by the visitors or even worn as prosthetics. Besides a series of more classical freestanding sculptures, he has also made furniture shown in exhibition spaces: his comfortable and colourful couches and chairs turn the museum into a renewed social environment for viewing art. His main technique using cardboard or wood structures coated in plaster, papier maché or epoxy resin gives a very unique aspect to his sculptures, which constantly questions the essence of art: an aesthetic of deconstruction, fragility and intentionally poorly made with an often biomorphic bent for the abstract form. The sculptural triptych entitled Phänomen is a brilliant example of this recognizable aesthetic, with its three bulbous forms covered with splotches and splatters in layers of pink, blue and green painting.