David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Austrian artist Franz West (1947–2012) on view at the gallery's Los Angeles location. This exhibition will survey a range of West's sculptures, works on paper, and installations produced between the late 1970s and early 2000s. West is known for creating objects that serve to redefine art as a social experience and calling attention to the way in which art is presented to the public and how viewers interact with works of art and with each other. A significant grouping of West's self-coined "legitimate sculptures"—colorful, abstract, painted papier-mâché and plaster forms that rest on unusual supports—from the 1990s will anchor the presentation. Also featured will be rarely seen early examples of the artist's Passstücke (Adaptives), sculptural forms that were intended to be handled by the viewer in a manner of their choosing.

West's work was the subject of two major institutional presentations in Los Angeles: the survey exhibition To Build A House You Start With the Roof, on view at LACMA in 2009, and his first American site-specific museum installation, Test, presented on the roof of MOCA in 1994. This is the eleventh presentation of the artist's work at David Zwirner since 1993, when his solo exhibition Investigations of American Art inaugurated the gallery's program. During his lifetime, West presented several solo exhibitions at David Zwirner, in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998 (with Heimo Zobernig), and 1999. The gallery further organized an exhibition of the artist's early work in 2004, a small survey in 2009, a show in 2014 that focused on work from the 1990s—accompanied by a catalogue published by David Zwirner Books, with essays by Eva Badura-Triska, Veit Loers, and Bernhard Riff—and a 2019 overview of the artist's work in London. Earlier this year, concurrent exhibitions of West's work were on view at the gallery's Paris and New York locations.

Press release courtesy David Zwirner.