His suggested title for the show: "Franz West: A Lot of Pressure."

"It was kind of heartwarming that someone who had such wide international visibility was feeling the intensity of this moment for himself," said Darsie Alexander, curator of the exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

But she didn't think his suggestion was appropriate for the show.

"Because the work itself is very generous and is actually about relaxation and pleasure, the idea of inserting the word 'pressure' didn't make a lot of sense," she said.

Alexander settled on a more whimsical title, taken from something West said in a conversation with her: "Franz West, To Build a House You Start With the Roof: Work 1972-2008." It refers in part to the fact that the show isn't laid out in chronological order.

West (pronounced VEST), a 61-year-old native of Vienna, Austria, brings a welcome light touch to his work. Best known as a sculptor, he also builds furniture, makes collages and manipulates found objects. His sculptures in particular challenge the spectator to make sense of what, exactly, they're looking at. But they're not standoffish _ they're accessible and fun, encouraging interactivity.

West's art reveals a sometimes sly, sometimes juvenile sense of humor _ sausages and champagne bottles become overt phallic symbols in his collages, and some sculptures vaguely resemble excrement.

"For the longest time, humor was not accepted as a value," West said in an interview from Vienna. "It was a cheap thing _ humor _ and with serious art you had to be silent and contemplative. I'm for emancipation of humor."

It was only fitting that Baltimore's legendary gross-out comic filmmaker, John Waters, was touring the West show on a recent afternoon. "I'm a big fan," said Waters, himself a gallery artist. "I just like the ugliness of it and the ones with liquor involved."

West has suffered through periods of alcoholism that he sometimes references in his work; four large, Easter Island-style papier-mache heads were inspired in part by the feeling of waking up with a hangover. The "Lemure Heads" look dazed, groggy and cotton-mouthed.

West was born in 1947 and remembers playing in bombed-out ruins as a child. As a teenager and young adult, he attended several performances by the Viennese Actionists, a group known for grotesque public displays that used bloody corpses. While he credits the Actionists with influencing him, his work is much gentler _ in part, he says, because they lived through World War II and he did not.

"I was in a more ridiculous way confronted with violence. My mother was a dentist," West said. "It was not like today, (when) you get injections. You heard all this screaming. ... So I had another kind of Actionist mother."

West started to get noticed in the 1970s with a series of pieces called "Adaptives," made from metal covered in globs of plaster. They are meant to be handled, but beyond that, their purpose is deliberately vague. At the Baltimore show, visitors are encouraged to pick up the 3 1/2-foot-tall (about 1-meter-tall) "Adaptives" and walk inside a cubicle where they can observe themselves in a mirror.

Picking up an Adaptive "kind of changes you," BMA senior curator Jay Fisher said. "Do you feel self-conscious? What are people going to think of you?"

Other West pieces simply encourage the spectator to take a seat. The show begins with a new piece, a 20-foot-tall (6-meter-tall) aluminum sculpture called "The Ego and the Id."

It consists of two twisting pieces of metal that resemble freeform roller coasters _ one purple, one multicolored. Built into the sculpture are several stools of varying heights, encouraging viewers to interact with the art, and see it from a different perspective. Participation makes the sculpture more dramatic and dreamlike.

The show includes some pieces of bona fide furniture _ two roughhewn but comfortable sofas and a metal divan. West insisted a fresh newspaper be placed on the divan every day.

"Franz West" runs through Jan. 4 at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The show will travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from March 15-June 7.