(Vienna 1947–2012)
Labstück, c. 1983, glass bottle, plaster, gauze, wood, acrylic, painted by Jenny Feldmann, 34 x 68 x 34 cm, (K)

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Jenny Feldmann (born in Baghdad in 1959),
1978–1983 Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, Vienna
1983–1986 working with Franz West-

See:
A Tribute to Franz West, published by Buchhandlung Walther König, 2013, page 90

Registered:
Franz West Private Foundation Archive

Provenance:
Private Ownership, Vienna - purchased directly from the artist

Labstücke
In this context, mention should be made of a special or extended form of Passstück that has existed since the 1980s. The so-called Labstücke are emptied and sculpturally covered bottles of all sorts that, as West emphasises, relate to the drinker’s body in a diametrically opposed fashion...

‘In those days, I was drinking rather heavily but did not want to throw the empty bottles away because their forms reminded me of their contents. Their contents-through which they had received their value and which I had poured into myself-had now become mine. I had become the shell of these contents, and in order to emanipate their former shell, the bottle was sublimated into a work of art’
Franz West