Untitled

A vibrant concoction of acrylic, paper and photo-collage, Untitled (1995) is a unique work created by Franz West as a ‘poster’ to accompany one of his major museum projects. It has been widely exhibited, including in his 1996 retrospective Proforma at mumok, Vienna, at Documenta X in Kassel in 1997, and in his 1997-98 solo show at Porto’s Fundação de Serralves. Typical of his bold, irreverent approach to art-making, West’s ‘posters’ employ distinctive typography and inventive mixed-media techniques that sidestep the slick design often associated with storied art institutions. The present work, as its stencilled text indicates, relates to Clamp – an important installation that West debuted at the Carnegie Art Museum, Pittsburgh in 1995, and which now resides in the collection of the Netherlands’ Kröller-Müller Museum.

Playing with the language of display, Clamp formed a room-sized environment of variable dimensions, inhabited by examples of West’s furniture and papier-mâché sculptures. Its chipboard walls were papered with pages from Pittsburgh’s phonebook and included seven working telephones to reflect the setting of West’s studio, where, he said, the interruption of a phonecall was often key to him completing a sculpture. Untitled likewise incorporates small fragments of paper, and places three photo-collaged visitors in a vivid space of dynamic orange, green and pink brushstrokes, as if imagining them inside the crucible of West’s creative process.