Franz West

FORTHCOMING & NEW RELEASES

FRANZ WEST: WHERE IS MY EIGHT?
Text by Eva Badura, Klaus Goerner, Georg Grooelle, Peter Keicher, Andreas Reiter-Raabe.
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783863352813 | US $55.00
Pub Date: 7/31/2013
Forthcoming

ACTIVE BACKLIST

FRANZ WEST: WHITE ELEPHANT
Text by Patrick Charpenel, Michel Blancsubé, Veit Loers.
RM
ISBN: 9788492480807 | US $30.00
Pub Date: 10/31/2010
Active | Awaiting stock

FRANZ WEST: EARLY WORK
Essay by Eva Badura-Triska.
ZWIRNER & WIRTH
ISBN: 9780970888464 | US $65.00
Pub Date: 8/15/2006
Active | Awaiting stock

FRANZ WEST: WE'LL NOT CARRY COALS
KUNSTHAUS BREGENZ
ISBN: 9783883757261 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 3/2/2004
Active | Awaiting stock

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

FRANZ WEST
Text by Veit Loers.
DUMONT
ISBN: 9783832176518 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2007
Out of Print | Not available

FRANZ WEST: MERCILESS
Edited by Peter Noever, MAK Vienna. Essays by Carlos Basualdo, et al.
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775711388 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 2/2/2002
Out of print | Not available

Franz West

Franz West: Where Is My Eight?

Text by Eva Badura, Klaus Goerner, Georg Grooelle, Peter Keicher, Andreas Reiter-Raabe.
Published by Walther König, Köln

The focus of this publication is Franz West’s (1947–2012) Kombi-Werke installations, in which greatly differing individual pieces are brought together and then recomposed into new works. Gathering elements such as fittings, furniture, sculpture, videos and works on paper from all periods--and even works made by artist friends--into grand ensembles, the Kombi-Werke are without doubt key elements in West’s legacy. An example is the three-part papier-mâché sculpture “Redundanz”: its starting point is the gouache “Lost Weight” (1994), with its motif of a dieting woman showing her oversized pants. Omitting the “W,” West transforms “Lost Weight” into “Lost Eight,” in order to derive the title for a larger work, “Where Is my Eight?” With 250 color illustrations, this substantial and inspiring volume, and the exhibition it accompanies, were overseen by the artist himself, before his death in the summer of 2012.

Franz West: White Elephant

Text by Patrick Charpenel, Michel Blancsubé, Veit Loers.
Published by RM

Since the mid-1960s, Franz West (born 1947) has been finding new ways to balance his art on the line between beauty and ugliness. At the age of 14, West--living in bombed-out, post-Nazi Vienna--attended an event organized by the Viennese Actionists, at which Hermann Nitsch smashed a lamb cadaver against the wall of a basement room in a tenement building: "it was incredibly shocking and really depressing," West said. His own art over the past four decades has eschewed such nihilism: his Adaptives, which he has described as "neuroses made material" (with a nod to Darwin as well), are sculptural objects for viewers to engage physically, using them as ungainly temporary prostheses, appliances, accessories, and instructional tools. White Elephant documents these, as well as West's important works of furniture and collage, and his marvelously awkward sculptures, which seem lumpily homely and unbalanced, or gangly and hopeful as a blemished teen.

Franz West

Text by Veit Loers.
Published by Dumont

For 30 years now, Viennese artist Franz West has been in his own artistic territory, and for the last 20, he has been one of the most influential working sculptors, as confirmed by a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1997. Through his "Passstücke" (passport pieces or adapters) of the 1970s, his furniture assemblies of the 1980s and bright exterior sculptures of the 1990s, West regularly irritates viewers with parody and outlandishness, and impresses with surprising solutions to the old social utopia of art and life. The implied invitation to touch his works disrupts the museum dynamic of velvet rope and burglar alarm, and leads to different levels of engagement--bodily, linguistic, philosophical and psychological--in which the artist's sense of humor shines through. This introduction to West's oeuvre is accompanied by commentaries, interpretation and details about his most recent work, developed over the past few years.

Franz West: Early Work

Essay by Eva Badura-Triska.
Published by Zwirner & Wirth

Franz West is widely considered to be one of Europe's most important contemporary artists, and he has reached that position without ever having needed to limit himself to a single medium or mode of expression. Like other artists who came of age in the midst of Conceptualism and Minimalism, his work has ranged widely and blurred the boundaries between art and life. The works showcased here, including autonomous sculpture and interactive pieces, were all made between 1972 and 1988, starting with the furniture with which he expanded our understanding of sculpture--a chair with a seat made of chains still stirs visceral reactions--and the photo-filled and always photogenic collages with which he seemed to join Pop. Early Work exemplifies the richness of West's early production, and Eva Badura-Triska's insightful essay traces through it the development of the theories and practices that continue to shape his work today.

Franz West: We'll Not Carry Coals

Edited by Eckhard Schneider. Essays by Gudrun Ankele, Rudolf Sagmeister, Ludwig Seyfarth and Andrea ãberbacher. Foreword by Eckhard Schneider.
Published by Kunsthaus Bregenz

What Franz West began in the early 1970s with his hand-size “body growths”--the Adaptive--has since then mutated into a fertile living environment of sculptures, collages, furniture ensembles, walk-in rooms, and rooms to sit in. Organized into five chapters, each of which corresponds to a floor of the Kunsthaus Bregenz, where a surreal retrospective of West's work was recently mounted, We'll Not Carry Coals offers a serene presentation of the artist's witty, tongue-in-cheek body of work. From Haini, 60 squeaky blue-green plastic armchairs modeled on a carved-out tree stump, to Corona, a giant outdoor sculpture modeled, perhaps, on bendable drinking straws, West's work tickles the viewer somewhere between the diaphragm and the retina. Published in close cooperation with the Franz West Atelier, this book also features 50 heretofore unpublished collages from the artist's personal collection.

Franz West: Merciless

Edited by Peter Noever, MAK Vienna. Essays by Carlos Basualdo, et al.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

Since the mid-1970s, prominent Austrian artist Franz West has created objects in which use is the most important criterion for reception. After creating "Fittings," plaster and papier-mache objects meant to be attached to the human body and interacted with by their wearer, and their logical extension, "seating equipment," West sought to create a setting for a new kind of experience. Merciless presents little-seen work which West has constructed over the past five years and which addresses these late concerns. Of special focus is an expansive installation West developed for the MAK in Vienna, the largest of his completed works to date.