Featured Exhibition
Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008
October 12, 2008–January 4, 2009
Experience the supersize, provocative, and playful work of acclaimed Austrian artist Franz West. Considered one of the most important living artists today, Franz West has created an extraordinary body of work since the 1970s. Discover this influential and provocative European artist in the first comprehensive survey in the United States of his celebrated career, premiering at the BMA.
Even before you enter the BMA, examples of how West (pronounced Vest) has helped redefine sculpture as a social and environmental experience greet you on the Museum grounds with their giant colorful forms. You can touch or sit on these intriguing sculptures and not get yelled at. Inside the galleries, the exhibition is organized as a series of mini-installations beginning with the artist’s most recent work—a 25-foot-tall aluminum sculpture made expressly for this exhibition. Bold and colorful, this enormous looping sculpture titled The Ego and the Id has a place for you to take a seat and become a part of the art.
Subsequent galleries present works spanning West’s career, such as cabinets, tables, and chairs that infuse the art environment with the culture of bars, cafés, and domestic life (1990s), a large room of papier-mâché groupings and free-standing sculptures on pedestals (1980–1990s), and a gallery of stand-alone works that appear to almost, but not quite, tip over. In the final section (1970s), visitors can handle select Adaptives (human-scaled plaster sculptures) in a space tinged by the violet hue of West’s floor lamps. Throughout the exhibition, walls with clusters of collages show the often cheeky influences of mass media, comic books, pop culture, and advertising.
INACTIVITY CENTER
In a gallery adjacent to the exhibition, an Inactivity Center inspired by West’s themes of leisure and relaxation offers you a place to sit down and reflect on the artist’s work, read newspapers and magazines, or express your thoughts using word magnets to create poetry or prose. For curious questions, use the telephone in the Inactivity Center to “Dial a Curator.” The phone features select questions from a menu, and allows you to listen to pre-recorded answers for things like “Where did the title of the come from?”straight from the exhibition's curator. On weekends, art interpreters called “Friends of Franz” will be available in the galleries to introduce you to West’s work and demystify the often baffling world of contemporary art.
An illustrated catalogue co-published with MIT Press accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by BMA Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Darsie Alexander, curator Tom Eccles, and artist Rachel Harrison. The catalogue is available for sale in The BMA Shop.
This exhibition is curated by Darsie Alexander, BMA Senior Curator of Contemporary Art.
Generously sponsored by Howard Brown, The Alvin and Fanny Blaustein Thalheimer Exhibition Endowment Fund, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Generously supported by Constance R. Caplan, Suzanne F. Cohen and the Suzanne F. Cohen Exhibition Fund, Stiles Tuttle Colwill and Jonathan Gargiulo, Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff, Ellen W. P. Wasserman, BMA Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art , Sandra Levi Gerstung, an anonymous donor, Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann, Sylvia Cordish, Andrew and Christine Hall, Monroe Denton, Aaron and Barbara Levine, and Lin Lougheed.
Additional support provided by Austrian Airlines and The Austrian Cultural Forum, New York.
Events
Sound Off! Call for Entries
October 12–December 1, 2008
Calling all beatboxers, DJs, musicians, poets, and spoken-word artists! Visit the BMA’s new exhibition Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof, and let it serve as your muse for this YouTube competition. Record your creative response to the exhibition and post it to the BMA’s YouTube page. Winners, determined by both popular vote and a panel of BMA judges, will perform at a special late-night event held at the BMA on Friday, December 5. Deadline to submit an entry is December 1.
Check out what Art21 blog, who has been following the BMA's Franz West videos and the Sound Off! competition on YouTube, as to say about the BMA's exciting online competition!
For more information about how to submit, please call 443-573-1832 or e-mail programs@artbma.org.
Sound Off!
Friday, December 5
7 p.m., Doors open at 6 p.m.
Free BMA Members*
$10 non-Members
$5 Students with valid I.D.
Enjoy an evening of multimedia performances featuring winners from the Sound Off! competition and a lineup of local musicians and writers presenting original works, including young poets from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Baltimore Composers Forum members Keith Allan Kramer, Vivian Adelberg Rudow, and Benny Russell. There will be performances by Stephanie Barber, Lauren Bender, and Ric Royer, organized by Narrow House’s Justin Sirois, and original electronic performances by DJs Grayson Brown, Ravi Kittappa, Jason Urick, David Zimmerman, organized by Adam T. Rush. Tickets are available at the door. No advance purchase. For more information call 443-573-1832 or e-mail programs@artbma.org.
Media sponsors are b free daily, City Paper, and WTMD 89.7FM.
*Limit one ticket per individual membership, two free tickets for a dual membership, and four free tickets for Contributor membership levels and above.
Share photos on Flickr
What is shiny, larger-than-life, and loves to be photographed? Dorit, Baltimore’s soon-to-be-most-photographed outdoor sculpture! Stop by, snap a photo, or two or three, and share them on Flickr.
Ever wonder how large-scale sculptures are installed? Visit our Flickr site to see photos of the 20-foot-tall Dorit being transported and placed on the BMA's front terrace.
BMA on YouTube
View the installation of The Ego and the Id and other BMA videos on the Museum's new YouTube page! Subscribe to the BMA Channel and join us as a friend at youtube.com/artBMA.
Untitled. 1995. Private Collection, New York, Courtesy of David Zwirner. ©Franz West
