This results in the viewer himself inadvertently becoming a part of the artwork. They are intended to reproduce an experience which is physical, visual, auditory and sensory, with the additional possibility of fulfilling a useful function, such as offering members of the public the opportunity to sit down and have a rest in the middle of a museum or art gallery. West's environments are dependent on the participation of the viewer to activate them. His work is informed by his reading of the psychoanalysis of Lacan and the philosophy of Wittgenstein and investigates the relationship between what we see and how we encounter it physically. Their humble materials, typically papier maché or plaster, and rough-finished surfaces demonstrate West's hands-on approach in which art is part of the everyday. West himself refers to them as prostheses or visual representations of neuroses. Abstract in form, small in scale, they are suggestive of bodies, yet are ambiguous enough to conjur up a range of possible gestural associations. Often these are shown in installations which play on notions of display, inviting the viewer to change their positions from wall to plinth, or from one plinth to another. His Passstücke or Adaptives, begun in 1974, are small sculptural objects to be manipulated by the viewer. Although West began his artistic practice with painting and collage in the 1970s, he is best known for sculpture and furniture-based installation work with a strong interactive or performative element. 'I came to art via the places where artists meet, places where you would go and sit' (West quoted in Fleck, p.8).
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