A piece of papier-mâché, plaster and paint, perhaps a gnarled arch or a misshapen protrusion: Franz West’s Passstücke (Adaptives) look as though they could be tools, supports and foreign bodies all at once. The Viennese artist began developing these portable objects in the mid-1970s. They were not merely to be looked at, but held against the body and tried out with it. In West’s work, the usual museum rules – keep your distance, do not touch – thus become a subject in their own right.
From 6 November, Albertina Modern devotes the retrospective “Franz West. Die Revolution der Skulptur” (Franz West: The Revolution of Sculpture) to the artist, who died in 2012. It runs until 29 March 2027. At the same time, the Wien Museum turns its attention to the city and West’s formative years, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The occasion is his 80th birthday, which he would have celebrated on 16 February 2027. The two institutions take different approaches; together, they bring his work and his background into dialogue.
Sculpture That Takes the Body into Account
West grew up in Vienna and worked in an art scene in which the boundaries between artwork, action and everyday life were being renegotiated. The influence of Viennese Actionism provides an important context, but the Passstücke are not merely performance props. They shift the question of sculpture: rather than a self-contained form on a plinth, what emerges is a situation in which an object encounters a body.
The name “Passstück” suggests something designed to fit. Yet the forms offer no clear instructions for use and promise no comfortable fit. Their meaning emerges with the people who encounter them – through holding, carrying or simply imagining doing so. This does not automatically make the audience co-authors of some open-ended game: West’s invitation is an artistic proposition, not blanket permission to touch every original.
Invitation and Protection in the Museum
This is precisely where a practical tension lies. A work may be intended for physical interaction and yet be fragile, at risk from a conservation perspective or, as an original, not authorised for direct use. “Use” is therefore not only a property of the object, but also a decision about how the museum displays it. The museum may require visitors to keep their distance, offer a replica or enable handling through mediation and supervision. The published exhibition information does not specify which of these solutions the Albertina intends for individual works; visitors should observe the specific rules on site.
This distinction is more than a matter of caution. An exhibited object exists within an institutional framework: it is preserved, described and identified as an artwork. A usable piece, by contrast, changes through contact – at least in its meaning, and sometimes materially too. In West’s work, the boundary between the two is not simply dissolved. It becomes visible and must be renegotiated in each instance.
Vienna as Material
The Wien Museum complements the survey of West’s work with biographical and urban contexts. The exhibition “Franz West und Wien” (Franz West and Vienna) runs from 6 November 2026 to 2 May 2027. It focuses on early works and the question of how West drew on his home city not merely as a setting, but as material for his art. These include “Zitat” (Quotation) from 1985: the work conceals West’s childhood bed from Karl-Marx-Hof beneath tin foil. An early collage also incorporates wallpaper from his half-brother’s room.
The question facing the museum thus becomes more concrete. West’s art does not simply invite us to touch everything; it makes the distance between object and use negotiable. The two Vienna exhibitions promise to examine this friction from two directions: as a question of the body in sculpture, and as a question of how a city, everyday life and a museum become part of art.
Original reviewed by the editors · 31 October 2026
