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At Gagosian Gallery, "Franz West: Sale" mocks corporate culture's tendency to emphasize packaging and promotion at the expense of the goods and services being packaged and promoted. And on one level, the Viennese artist's first exhibition in Los Angeles since 1994 makes pointed fun of the fact that galleries are stores.
West takes this honest idea and runs with it, transforming the stylish salesrooms of the Richard Meier-designed gallery into a setting that recalls a yard sale. Chairs, tables and lamps, many made from recycled materials, are casually arranged amid a sofa and a love seat upholstered in raucous mix-and-match patterns. Wickedly amateurish paintings depicting heart-shaped strawberries, picnicking nudists and a shark devouring a swimmer decorate the walls.
Abstract sculptures made of paint-slathered papier-mache adorn various tabletops. "Caiphas & Kepler" rests on a stack of wood shipping palettes and resembles a pair of upside-down dancers. Three sausage-shaped sculptures dwarf everything else, their fat forms and cartoon colors making you feel like a kid again. Go ahead and climb on the two horizontal ones; they also function as funky benches. (West calls them amphibious and claims they float -- like Fred Flintstone air mattresses.) And sit on the furniture. Unlike much modern design, it's surprisingly comfortable.
The relaxed atmosphere West creates is a refreshing respite from the suffocating slickness of corporate culture and the conservative pretensions of over-serious art. But these pleasures are fleeting. They fade when you consider the other artists' works West's pieces package and promote as their own.
In the early 1960s, Claes Oldenburg made messy, paint-splattered sculptures of household items and displayed them in a New York storefront exhibition called "Store." In the late 1960s and early 1970s, San Diego-based Kim MacConnel transformed yard-sale furniture and thrift store finds into scrappy domestic ensembles by painting them with garish patterns and wild designs. And from the mid-'70s to the present, Jim Isermann has handcrafted rugs, chairs and wall hangings or overseen the production of tiles, wallpaper and chandeliers, bringing his brand of sophisticated idiosyncrasy to utilitarian things. Jorge Pardo and Pae White carry on this California-centered tradition, conflating art and design with provocative aplomb.
In this context, West's works look old-fashioned,...