Franz West gained worldwide recognition as one of the few Austrian sculptors of international renown at the latest with the celebrated retrospective of his work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at Tate Modern in London in 2018–19. It was not only the overwhelming abundance of spatial works on display but also the fusion of art and reality that West sought to express in his colorful sculptural installations that, at first glance, are reminiscent of the vibrant compositions by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. However, West's art is not primarily aesthetic or “beautiful”. Instead, the rebellious West shares a playful sense of self-irony with artists such as Martin Kippenberger, a delight in provocation and confusion. In West's enormous oeuvre, the observer seems confronted with extreme physical and mental states that have taken on a tangible form. Since the 1970s, his creations have met the art world with maximum nonconformity and disruption. This explains why his works are internationally celebrated as “punk sculptures”. Tate Modern, for example, put it as follows: "Franz West [...] brought a punk aesthetic into the pristine spaces of art galleries. His abstract sculptures, furniture, collages and large-scale works are direct, crude and unpretentious." (zit. nach: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/franz-west) In the 1970s, the Austrian agent provocateur created plaster, papier-mâché, and polyester sculptures. Owing to their unconventional aesthetics, West compared them to lumps of clay. West's “Passstücke” (fitting pieces) and his later, giant worm-like seating sculptures count among his most famous works. These objects only become artworks through an interaction with the viewer, as the “Passstücke” have to be worn like an artistic prosthesis. An interaction that results in a surreal, confusing, artistic deformation of the human body. West also aims at an active connection between art and people and their environment in his monumental seating sculptures, a series he has worked on since the 1990s. Designed for outdoor spaces, the artist used aluminum, allowing the same flexibility as plaster and papier-mâché from his earlier works. Bending and welding the individual aluminum pieces in a way that the seams remain visible, West avoids an overly perfect surface effect. Immersed in a bright red, the color of blood, flesh, and life, West created a vivid physicality with our ten-foot-high seating sculpture, an unconventional, amorphous, and interactive form imbued with tremendous vigor and dynamics. [JS]