Franz West: Home Elements (A Retrospective)

Opening on Saturday, September 17, to coincide with the SOHO Block Party, the gallery will present an exhibition by the Austrian artist Franz West entitled "Home Elements (A Retrospective)". This will be the second time Franz West is exhibiting at David Zwirner.

"Home Elements (A Retrospective)" will coincide with Franz West's large scale site specific installation at the DIA Center for the Arts, entitled "Rest" which will open on September 16, 1994.

"Rest" mirrors the artist highly successful recent installation "Test" at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. With the DIA installation, the artist aims to create a thought provoking and user-friendly public sculpture.

In contrast, with "Home Elements (A Retrospective)" Franz West has assembled sculpture, furniture, and works on paper which aim to reach into the private sphere of domesticity. This body of work will invite the viewer to interact with it. The collectors of this work are encouraged to substitute the exhibited "Home Elements" with comparable objects or furniture from their home.

The potential of interactive sculpture has been a continuous theme in Franz West's career culminating with recent large scale public works at Documenta IX in Kassel, Germany, Los Angeles MoCA , and now at DIA. For the show at David Zwirner, the artist will not only show new work, but also bring to the gallery a selection of earlier work which will help create a context for the installation at DIA. Since this is not meant as a complete survey of the artist's work, West has put the subtitle "(A Retrospective)" in parenthesis. Of special interest will be Franz West's very first interactive sculpture ("Passtück") which dates back to 1977 and is being shown here for the first time in the United States. He has also created a new instructional video demonstrating possible ways to use this work.