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 emancipate their former shell, the bottle was sublimated into a work of art.’ Franz West