Franz West: The 1990's
Franz West: The 1990s surveys the decade in which the Austrian sculptor arrived at the idiosyncratic style he is best known for. The book was published to accompany David Zwirner's 2014 New York exhibition of the same body of work.
The 1990s brought West's key innovations: exuberant color applied to his papier-mache forms, furniture used both as sculpture and as a social object meant to be sat on and used, and the incorporation of other artists' work into his own installations, producing interactive pieces that expanded what sculpture could be and how viewers encountered it. David Zwirner Books published the 140-page hardcover in 2016, designed by Henrik Nygren and printed in Verona, with 134 color and 2 black-and-white reproductions. It includes essays by West scholars Eva Badura-Triska and Veit Loers, plus a personal account by Bernhard Riff on the video collaborations he made with the artist through the decade.
West (1947-2012) emerged in Vienna in the early 1970s, developing a body of work that mixed high and low reference points and treated social interaction as part of the artwork itself, from his early Adaptives, sculptures meant to be handled and worn, to the couches and divans of his later installations. Badura-Triska, an art historian and curator at Vienna's mumok, curated West's first retrospective, Franz West, Proforma, in 1996, and has served as general secretary of the Franz West Archive since 1999.
