Franz West: Galerie Eva Presenhuber

Text by Max Wechsler

A tribute to the long collaboration between Franz West and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, this volume offers a comprehensive yet singular overview of the artist\s oeuvre. Gathering together extensive documentation and rare archive material on the numerous exhibitions they organized together since 1995, the book is designed by NORM (Zurich) and introduced by art theoretician and friend of the artist Max Wechsler, who followed the work of Franz West closely for many years. His illuminating foreword starts: "Without doubt, he was an odd bird, a gifted idler, a Vienna man sui generis and eccentric par excellence."

The relationship between Franz West and Eva Presenhuber began 20 years ago in Zurich. In 1995 West exhibited at the Galerie Walcheturm—"Franz West mit eine Geste von Raymond Hains. Telefonskulpturen. Sitz– und Liegegelegenheiten"—of which Eva Presenhuber was the owner from 1989 to 1997. This first collaboration was followed by many others, including Vom Feinsten in 1999, Aussenskulptur in 2002, and after the foundation of Galerie Eva Presenhuber in 2002, Modelle U.A. and Drei Skulpturen im Aussenraum Zürich (both 2006), and Der Definierte Raum (2011). After West’s death in 2012 Galerie Eva Presenhuber presented the shows Franz West (2015) and Möbelskulpturen (2015–2016) in cooperation with the Franz West Privatstiftung. This publication underlines the importance of the gallery space as an artistic laboratory, and highlights this particular relationship between an artist and his gallerist, especially when this one is a long-lasting and fruitful dialogue.