Something extraordinary is happening in downtown Vienna these days. The art roadies Reza Akhavan, Philipp Konzett, Heinz Neumann, and Gernot Schauer have pooled their respectable collections to make one thing clear once and for all: Franz West is alive and kicking! The pop-up exhibition “Franz West Privat: Gebrauchsanleitung im Aktionismusgeschmack” (Franz West Private: A User Guide for Actionism) spans forty hallowed years and is taking the city by storm.
Franz West departed for the unknown on July 26, 2012, shortly after the Venice Biennale honored him with a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Squabbles over the artist’s estate have dominated the scene ever since, while opportunities to actually see any of his work at a museum have been few and far between.
Many of the pieces gathered for the show have never been on public display, and most will likely not be seen again in this constellation: more than four hundred canonical works by one of the true greats of his métier, from the early drawings and provocative collages that the artist flogged over tavern tables to the groundbreaking “Adaptives,” sculptures that become art only when experienced or put to use. Also here are Auditorium, 1992, the rows of armchairs, daybeds, and sofas covered with Persian carpets for the open-air cinema at Documenta 9; welded aluminum-sheet outdoor sculptures in candy pink, light blue, and shit brown; a pair of Lemur Heads, which make for evil sprites in Vienna’s urban fabric; and informal sculptures made from low-key materials like plaster, papier mâché, decorative laminate, and all sorts of bric-a-brac. Rounding it off are valuable documents that speak to the history of the reception of West’s work, such as the designs for a first catalogue that never made it to print.
An exhibition conceived by impassioned collector-curators not only for the public audiences who have been itching for a shot of West, it’s also (and primarily) a tribute to an artist who always laughed at academic-didactic art and unflappably swept his brilliant sagaciousness, generosity, and gift for snide banter under the table.
Translated from German by Gerrit Jackson.
