Franz West: Merciless

Through the summer and fall of 2002, the Franz West exhibition included all the objects and furniture on the first floor of the Tall Gallery, plus the objects and installations shown in the large second-floor gallery, dominated by the pink intestinal knot, Drama (Model). After November 2002, the Franz West exhibition was comprised of the two monumental sculptures, Drama and Kantine on the second floor. Franz West works the territories between furniture and sculpture, and between public art and our most private emotions and physical acts. His objects almost demand to be touched, picked up, sat on, read, or worn. It is not surprising, then, that West emerged from a moment when the art scene in Vienna was dominated by what became known as Actionism, a highly charged art movement focused on the human body in its most visceral, sexualized, animalistic state of being. But West's art took the staged rituals and bacchanal excess of Actionism in a different direction. West felt that if life (and art) were somehow alienated from an elemental, grounded state of existence, the most effective role for art was not the theatrical, blood-infused erotics of Actionism and Happenings, but rather the direct confrontation and interaction with the viewer. Actionism events were performed by artists, or by audiences under the direct control of artists. Picking up on the interactive quality of those events, but jettisoning the intervention of the artist, West created a body of work known as "Adaptives" in which the viewer is invited to pick up strangely shaped objects. Often difficult to handle and awkwardly sized, the objects forced the viewer to assume ungainly, off-balance poses, and in these moments of physical exertion and self-consciousness West proposed that the artworks (and their handlers) become "representations of neuroses". Unlike the Actionists who propose ritualized ecstasy as a conduit to some fundamental state of pure being, West's objects seem to highlight the impossibility of catharsis: we are always self-conscious, he seems to say, and art is always something out there to be grappled with. Influenced by his wide readings in philosophy, and particularly the Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, West came to feel that while art's ultimate purpose and meaning might always remain unknowable, it should at least be practical in its use. West likes his art to be useful in its natural setting: a comfortable gallery chair, which is at once both a piece of sculpture and furniture, is an ideal object for West. In Kantine, for example, visitors are invited to sit (and during special events, even eat!) at a vast table, or perhaps pull up a chair to read a book. In doing so, the visitor engages with art, feels it in the seat of her pants, so to speak, adding to the sculpture by becoming enmeshed within it. West's practice of creating comfortable environments within the space of art institutions makes him the father figure for a whole group of younger artists working today under the banner of "relational aesthetics". "Don't look for the meaning of things," as Wittgenstein wrote, "look for their use." Cooking, eating, socializing, reading - the most basic activities of life - become "media" within this art practice. Add to that West's penchant for puns and clever wordplays (Kantine refers to "Kant" and "food service"), and one begins to sense the tricky richness of his work.

Franz West: Merciless