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Artist or Maker: FRANZ WEST
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Provenance: Sculpture: Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Innsbruck; Painting: Gagosian Gallery, London; Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Innsbruck
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Exhibited: Innsbruck, Schlosspark Ambras, Franz West: die Aluskulptur, 4 June - 15 October, 2000; Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Franz West: Meeting Points, 12 August - 14 October, 2001(sculpture); Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Franz West: Meeting Points, 12 August - 14 October, 2001; Innsbruck, Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Franz West, 2002 (painting)
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Literature: Exhibition catalogue, Schlosspark Ambras, Franz West: die Aluskulptur, Cologne, 2000, p. 28 (sculpture illustrated)
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Notes: West’s sculptures are intrinsically amorphous, apparently formless in their appearance, and may be observed and/or used. Their dignified presentation and staging induces the viewer’s contemplation, otherwise reserved for more solemn art forms, but which here in fact allows the anti-sculpture to come properly into its own. Similarly the plinth –which modern art has been at such paints to overcome –does not constitute a contradiction in West’s work. Nor does it represent a sudden introduction of conservatism. The plinths are just as non-formalist as the other elements of the sculptures, and are incorporated into these, creating small environments: Gesamtkunstwerk –synthesized artforms. All of this goes into making up West’s concept of his art: turning his back on traditions of the sublime and the monumental in twentieth century sculpture, he breathes new life into the concept of a sculpture as a three-dimensional object with which once can have a personal, physical encounter. Consequently, West occupies a major role in contemporary sculpture.’ (R. Fleck, Sex and the Modern Sculptor, Franz West, London, Phaidon Press Limited, 1999)
