ANKER, SEIL UND RETTUNGSRING
Franz West (b. 1947 in Vienna, Austria), who has counted among the outstanding artist personalities of the international art world at least since the mid-1980s, continues to probe the variable functional possibilities of the concept of sculpture with his sculptural composition, ‘Anker, Seil und Rettungsring’ (Anchor, rope and lifebelt, 2003), installed on the rooftop of the former Löwenbräu brewery building that houses Galerie Hauser & Wirth & Presenhuber.
Starting in the mid-1970s with his objects called ‘Paßstücke’ (Fitting pieces), made of papier-mâché, plaster, polyester and gauze, West has continually ques-tioned the conception of a closed work of art intended for mere reflective con-templation by replacing it with a model founded on participation. The organic formal vocabulary, adapted to the human body, of these sculptural elements in-vite active viewers to use them like instruments and relate them to their own bodies any way they wish. Similarly, the ‘furniture sculptures’ that begin to appear in the mid-1980s want to encourage visitors to sit down on the roughly-worked sofas, chairs and chaises longues covered with old carpets or other fabric and move them around the room following instructions by the artist. Thus, the strategy pursued in the ‘Paßstücke’, ‘furniture sculptures’ or the biomorphously conceived ‘sitting sculptures’ understands the viewer as a person addressed by the artist and his work in an interactive dialogue. By including the individual experience of the sculptural qualities of the objects as an integral part in the creative process of art, West virtually explodes the myth of the sacrosanctity of the complete, autonomous work of art.
At the same time as he first produced ‘furniture sculptures’, West began to cre-ate abstract objects made of papier-mâché, plaster and polyester that were not intended to be experienced physically, thus transposing the participation model onto the mental level of contemplation and imagination. Although deliberately presented on pedestals, these ‘legitimate sculptures’, according to West, are not to be seen as self-sufficient objects of purely passive contemplation. Rather, he offers them as starting points for mental responses, with the material quality and shape of the objects, along with the title and sometimes an accompanying text by the artist, triggering chains of associations and ideas in the heads of the view-ers.
The spatial shift, begun in the mid-1990s, of sculptural works into outdoor public space represented a change in West’s work processes. Working on a different scale, he started to use new materials such as sheet metal and, later, aluminium, which not only are weather-proof but also enable him to transfer his spontaneous working method onto a large scale. These brightly-coloured, monochrome outdoor sculptures constructed of welded aluminium sheets again invoke West’s central aesthetic concept of the unfinished and imperfect that refuses demands for formal perfection and closedness.
Since the specific spatial conditions of a natural or urban context have a bearing on the effect and role of the form, colour and material quality of the objects, it is the individual recipient’s perception and experience that ascribe new possible meanings and functions to the objects. And this is also the way West proceeded with the sculptural composition entitled ‘Anker, Seil und Rettungsring’ on the rooftop of the Löwenbräu building, where he transposed seafaring elements into the context of an urban cityscape. With this contextual shift, both spatial and thematic, the artist once again succeeds in making evident to the viewer the vari-ous possibilities and changeability of the meaning and function of one and the same object. The decision about what content to recognize in the objects ulti-mately rests with the perception of each viewer.