Franz West

Galerie Bernier Eliades, Athens

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2005

“The subversive thing about West's artistic practice is the almost naïve nostalgia that he sets as a trap. It is for the viewer to make the practice into a reality; the artist himself does only part of the work.”

– Martin Prinzhorn, ("Collaboration And The Issue Of Completion," Parkett, no. 37, p. 95)

Executed in 2004, Franz West’s Zi Zi One Out provides a glimpse into the artist’s range over the course of a decades-long artistic evolution. Zi Zi One Out’s three frames present a gracefully colorblocked collage, demonstrating West’s ability to bring together disparate elements into one seamless whole. Instead of viewing artistic creation solely as the expression of his individual character, West credited the external world as his main source of influence: “I don’t construct things from out of the void and place them into the world. I face the world and I respond to its demands the best I can. That’s the way I work – not constructive but responsive” (David Zwirner, Franz West: the 1990s, 2014, p. 9). 

Through a long and renowned career, which culminated in winning the lifetime achievement award at the 2011 Venice Biennale, West dazzled audiences worldwide with his striking conceptual work. With recent retrospective exhibitions at the Hepworth Museum, Wakefield (2014) and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2018), as well as a recent Tate Modern show, London (2019), it is evident that West’s practice exerts a continuing influence on contemporary artistic developments. Taking cues from conceptual styles throughout the 20th century, Zi Zi One Out is one such testament to West’s vast stylistic achievements not only in his later career but throughout his oeuvre.