In his practice, Franz West questioned borders between art and everyday life, and between the artist, the audience, and the work. He made sculptures, installations, collages, and works on paper from a wide variety of materials, including plaster, papier mâché and aluminum. These are rough and abstract in their construction and meant to sound and reflect the relationship between the public and the work. In the mid–1970s, he began creating his Passstücke (Adaptives), objects that may be physically interacted with, thereby underlining the conviction that the experience of “the world” is not universal but depends on the respective time, place, and situation.
In his sculptures the interaction takes place on an intellectual level, whereby the titles of the work (and in a number of cases also short texts, which he adds to the pieces) offer additional stimuli. Translating as “compression” or “condensation,” the title of this work suggests a physical force on and between the objects.