![]() When West showed his work, he mixed up genres and periods, and liked to bring in the work of collaborators and friends. The exhibition, organised in conjunction with the Tate (it arrives in London in 2019), presents a selection of 200 or so of these, suggesting ways in which West enriched numerous topics within contemporary art: relational aesthetics, artistic homage, bricolage and public sculpture. The Paßstücke are one part of a vast, multimedia corpus of work that numbers 6,000 pieces, ranging from maquettes and collage, to posters, furniture, film and monumental sculpture. The bare, curtained cubicles are his invention, too, providing a white cube within the white cube, and an ambiguous space somewhere between public and private, stage and dressing room. ![]() Within this first room are numerous of his Paßstücke (an invented neologism meaning something close to “adaptable fragments”), several of which can be handled, hugged, clutched and caressed during the show’s run. West placed interaction at the centre of his art, prioritising his viewer’s physical engagement with the work he made. The jovial, slightly self-conscious atmosphere is courtesy of Austrian sculptor Franz West (1947-2012), with the scene unfolding in the opening room of his posthumous retrospective currently at the Centre Pompidou. It is a Monday morning, but there is a peculiar sense of playfulness in the air. The playful scene melts away as it began, the participants returning to the flow of visitors passing through the gallery space. A knot of onlookers gathers round, while a gallery invigilator offers words of encouragement. In the neighbouring cabin, two women balance a strange, misshapen baton between them, gripping each other’s arms. She stands and draws a clinical white curtain across the cabin in which they are standing, screening them both as she hands him the phone. He juts out a shoulder and poses theatrically for the woman he is with, who crouches next to him with her iPhone, laughing. A protuberance of white papier-mache and plaster balloons from one end of the staff. Photo © Philippe Migeat - Centre Pompidou.Ī man dressed in a light, rainproof jacket hooks his arm around a long metal rod. They shape-shift depending on how you look at them (at some points they’re faces, at others a landscape or exploding nebula) and, given West’s belief that an audience’s response is half of the artwork, their titles are just as likely to refer to your ponderings on what the hell they are as the cheeky chat between murmuring sculptures.Franz West retrospective – playfulness is in the air From his diminutive drawings to his large Pepto-Bismol pink sculptures, Franz West's world will leave you feeling slightly scrambled, but wholly absorbedįranz West retrospective, installation view, Pompidou Centre, Paris. Daubed with riotous colours, these rough head-like bundles of Papier Mâché possess bulging features and gaping mouths and appear to be nattering amongst themselves. As well as these Passstücke, highlights of the Wakefield show include two similar sculpture clusters, Das Geraune (Murmuring) and Parrhesia (derived from the Greek ‘to speak freely’). ![]() Whereas their approach was to force their pieces upon participants, West’s method was a lot softer, suggesting people may or may not interact with his sculptures as they pleased. Self-taught West began practicing in the 1970s, largely reacting to the Vienna Actionists, a disparate group of artists that experimented with performance and public engagement. And it’s true, with an extra long collar bone or a cylindrical arm the size of a bollard you do feel self-conscious, mischievous or just plain daft – so much so that the Hepworth Wakefield has provided a curtained area so you can interact with the adaptives in private without fearing a critical gaze. West’s thinking was that holding or supporting one of these bizarre additions makes you perceive your own body and your surroundings in a different way. West is probably best known for his Passstücke (roughly translated as Adaptives) – Papier Mâché wearable forms that resemble protruding skeletal sections or extraneous limbs. ![]() But in Where is my Eight?, a new exhibition celebrating the work of late Austrian artist Franz West at the Hepworth Wakefield, that kind of eccentric behaviour is actively encouraged. ![]() At most art galleries, if you picked up the sculptures and started wearing them, you’d be escorted from the building pretty sharpish and possibly sent for some kind of psychological evaluation. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |