Dossier - Franz West
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Franz West
1947, Wenen - Wenen

West began his career in the mid-sixties in Vienna, where Viennese Actionism was in full swing. His early sculptures, performances and collages were a reaction to the work of controversial artists like Herman Nitsch, who tried to break through the self-satisfaction of bourgeois society with orgiastic public performances that included imitations of rituals such as animal sacrifices.
In the early seventies, he created small, portable sculptures called the ‘Paßstücke’. These were strange looking sculptures made of plaster, which were only complete art works if the public picked them up and carried them about or used them in a sort of slapstick performance. For the ‘Paßstücke’ (which were a sort of extension of the body), West covered everyday objects such as tools, bottles and handbags in papier-mâché, plaster or gauze. In their new guise, freed from their specific practical functions, the objects gained a social function. Being ‘involved’ with a work of art gives the spectator a different, more familiar relationship to the object concerned.
You could say that West’s sofas and other large-scale ‘environments’ are evaluated versions of the objects. Not only do they change the position of the spectator in relation to the work of art, but they also turn the surroundings into a more social and lounge-like space in which to view the art. Looked at in this light, West’s chaises longes are literal extensions of the perception that helps us to understand art (and ourselves) better.
Sometimes, West’s sofas are covered with oriental carpets or fabric with African prints. For the Bonnefantenmuseum, he created a series of sofas entitled ‘Leviten’ (laws of the Old Testament), which he had covered with black and white fabric. West took his inspiration for this from ‘Walldrawing 801 Spiral’, the spiral-shaped wall painting created by Sol LeWitt at the same time (1996) in the tower of the Bonnefantenmuseum. At the time – and now once again – Leviten functioned as a linking element between the visitor and the other art works on display.
 
The museum’s collection includes Leviten (1996), Paßstücke (+Video stand, table and videotape 1998-1999), Panta Rhei (1996), Plakate 1983-1997 (46 posters, 1990) and Franz West Kraavik Waande Maastricht Bonnefantenmuseum (1997).
Paßstücke, 1998-1999

Images
Collection Bonnefantenmuseum
Paßstücke, 1998-1999
Kraavik Waande Maasttricht Bonnefantenmusuem, 1997
Panta Rhei, 1996
Plakate 1983-1997; 46 affiches, 1990
Leviten, 1996