Franz West Adaptives
Franz West began making drawings around
1970 before moving on to painted collages incorporating magazine images that
showed the influence of Pop Art. His art practice started as a reaction to the Viennese Actionism movement has been exhibited in museums and galleries for more than
three decades.Over the last 20 years he had a regular presence in big
expositions like Documenta and the Venice Biennale.
West's artwork is typically made out of plaster, papier-mache, wire, polyester, aluminium and other, ordinary materials. He started to produce paintings,
but then turned to collages, sculptures, portable sculptures called
"Adaptives" or "Fitting Pieces", environments and furniture – "welded metal chairs and divans, some
minimally padded and upholstered in raw linen." For his early sculptures, West often covered ordinary
objects—bottles, machine parts, pieces of furniture and other, unidentifiable
things—with gauze and plaster, producing "lumpy, grungy, dirty-white
objects".
In the late 1990s, West turned to large-scale
lacquered aluminum pieces, the first (and several after) inspired by the forms
of Viennese sausages, as well as the shapes of the Adaptives. With their
monochrome colors and irregular patchwork surfaces, these works were also meant
for sitting and lying.







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