Provenance: Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Innsbruck / Wien Private Collection, Austria Exhibited: June – October 2000, Franz West Die Aluskulptur im Schloßpark Ambras, Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Innsbruck, AT October 2022 – January 2023 FRANZ WEST Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Vienna Published: Franz West Die Aluskulptur, Skulptur im Schloßpark Ambras, Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Klaus Thoman (ed.), Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König Cologne, Innsbruck 2000, with ill. p. 33, 39. The years from 2000 to 2003 were of special significance for Franz West in several respects, privately, professionally and artistically. With the exhibition “Franz West Die Aluskulptur”” produced by Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, held at Schlosspark Ambras Innsbruck in the summer of 2000, an extensive group of outdoor sculptures in aluminium was created for the first time (for the Qwülze and other forms, aluminium plates are cut into irregular polygons and welded on a skeleton-like support structure to form sausages that are narrower at the ends and then painted: gum pink, filing cabinet green, plaster white, neon orange, neon pink, neon yellow, faecal brown, royal blue). For West, this means new working material and new artistic possibilities, but also more employees, another studio, many works for gardens and public spaces. Between the construction and the opening, he marries his long-term partner Nadja Pogats. For the opening he had himself driven to the Schlosspark in one of his two (second-hand) Maseratis (he did not have a driving licence), the same one that he was to douse thickly with pink paint in the MAK exhibition “”Gnadenlos”” (Merciless), thus turning it into a (unroadworthy) unique piece of art. International exhibition tour gets underway: 2000 “”In & Out”” ZKM Karlsruhe and 2001 Palacio de Velázquez/Reina Sofia Madrid, Royal Botanic Garden Edinbourg, “”Appartement”” Deichtorhallen Hamburg, “”Gnadenlos/Merciless”” MAK Vienna and 2002 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Massachusetts US, “”Burning”” MAC Marseille, 2003 “”Franzwestite”” Whitechapel Gallery, London, “”We’ll not carry coals”” Kunsthaus Bregenz. He changes his representing main gallery and accepting Gagosian’s offer. He separates from his wife and marries Tamuna Sirbilaze.”