Franz West, Echolalia (Installation View), via Art Observed
On view this month at David Zwirner’s 533 West 19th Street space in New York, the gallery presents a commanding installation by artist Franz West. Created only a few years before the artist’s death, Echolalia consists of seven colorful, larger-than-life sculptures that seem to stand slightly off-balance, interspersed with three cushioned divans. Not exhibited publicly in more than ten years, the work represents the apotheosis of West’s commitment to sculpture as social space, integrating the viewer within an immersive, total environment. Conceptually, the installation manifests the intersection of many of West’s ongoing interests—most notably, the playfulness of sculpture, the participation of the viewer, and the importance of language.
Franz West, Echolalia (Installation View), via Art Observed
The work’s title—which refers to the repetition of words and sounds made by young children when learning to talk—was inspired by the artist’s son, who at the time of its creation was three years old and brought his own, distinct perspective to his father’s oversized works. Taking on the formal and spatial logic of sculpture as a site to redirect this notion, West’s works in the piece are immense, distended forms taking on surreal and confounding relationships of form and space. Forms seem to spring forth from trash cans and buckets, ballooning out from their points of origin to swell out and tower over the viewer.
Franz West, Echolalia (Installation View), via Art Observed
Franz West, Echolalia (Installation View), via Art Observed
The works make much of this confounding relation between scale and shape, form and balance, and invite long, considered interactions by its viewers. Chairs sit within the forest of works, allowing visitors to sit and ponder, consider and stare at each piece. Yet the artist also spoke of the work itself as modular: “The sculptures are mobile, which means … you can move and contort [them] the way you like best,” he said. “When they are moved and who moves them … are questions of practical life and therefore beyond my sphere of responsibility.”
This notion of responsibility is a striking one for the work pushing a role on the viewer as caretaker and presenter, underscoring West’s challenging and forward-thinking practice.
The show closes April 15th.
– D. Creahan
Read more:
Franz West at David Zwirner [Exhibition Site]
