Franz West

Born in Vienna in 1947, Franz West developed as an artist in the context of the 1960s performance artists, the Viennese Actionists. Drawing on psychology, philosophy, the aesthetics and techniques of his mother's dental laboratory, and images from mass culture in glossy magazines, West makes series of collages and experimental sculptures which subvert the expectations of the hushed gallery space. He opens up spaces for participation, social interaction and play through the use of furniture and strange wearable sculptures of plaster encrusted forms and wire called Adaptives. These sculptures, which reject easy interpretation (and have sometimes been described as visual representations of neuroses), are suddenly transformed through use into action props which animate and involve the audience, creating new forms of behaviour and reversing the expectations of gallery viewing. Serious critique merges with irony and entertainment.

More details about the exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery. (http://www.whitechapel.org/content477.html)