Franz West - Contemporary Art Part II New York Friday, November 13, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Frankfurt; Private collection, USA

  • Catalogue Essay


    The past decade has witnessed an extraordinary jump in West’s international exposure, due in no small measure to the large public commissions he has completed. Among other effects, the execution of outdoor projects at Innsbruck [2000], New York [2004], and Paris [2007] has affected the size and complexity of his works…As the forms materialize from highly polished sheets, the metal is bent and buckled into submission. Shapes develop from collaged-on fragments: loops, obelisks, balls, and wedges. And then the colors come as if extracted from a Toys “R” Us catalogue, with lemon yellows, sky blues, and bubblegum pinks adding festivity to the glossy chrome bodies of these monumentally humble objects. Ambitious, demanding of high-end manufacture, but unabashedly stitched together like a salvaged car, these enormous and enormously appealing forms now populate parks and plazas on both sides of the Atlantic. D. Alexander, ed., Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972 - 2008, Baltimore, 2008, p. 96
    Fundamentally sculptural in construction, West’s work veers frequently toward the biomorphic and prosthetic, mines the intellectualism of Freud and Wittgenstein, and possesses an awkward beauty that speaks with equal fluency to the aesthetics of painterly abstraction and trash art. The present lot, a pearlescent, delectable shade of pink delights its viewer in not only color and form but presentation as well: one is enraptured to touch, sit, and enjoy the work in its entirety. West is indeed a master of the medium here for the “flesh” of the aluminum and the “vivacity” of the paint layers enliven and play with the mundane and imagination one and the same. It is no surprise that these lively sculptures play out amongst private and public spaces worldwide, bringing the focus of West to the forefront of the international art world.

162

Untitled

2004
Lacquered aluminum.
21 x 56 x 46 in. (53.3 x 142.2 x 116.8 cm).

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for $122,500

Contemporary Art Part II

13 Nov 2009
New York