As is often the case with Pompidou exhibitions, it’s more about recounting than overtly questioning, the curatorial direction of travel coming through in what is and isn’t shown. For example, if you’re particularly interested in the post-1980 Hollein, the practicing architect who constructed buildings such as Mönchengladbach’s landscape-like Museum Abteiberg (1972–82), Vienna’s funky Haas Haus (1985–90), or Auvergne’s Vulcania theme park (1994–2002), you’ll likely be disappointed, since that part of his career is relegated to a small section at the end, where a couple of models and a slide show attempt to convey the breadth of his built output. Instead, the exhibition concentrates on the radical early years of Hollein’s praxis, a choice no doubt partly motivated by Migayrou’s personal inclinations, partly by the fact that this sort of stuff is far easier to make an exhibition out of than actual buildings, and partly because the Pompidou’s holdings, acquired directly from Hollein, are strongest in this respect.

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Hollein's Frustration Door (4), Mobile Office (5), and Work and behaviour—life and death—everyday situations with the Fleisenstuhl chair (6) on view at Centre Pompidou's Gallery 4. Photos © Bertrand Provost, Centre Pompidou

Among the highlights, in an exhibition of highlights, one might cite the photomontages from the early 1960s, such as the series Aircraft Carrier Cities—readymade settlements to be docked or buried wherever you please in the landscape—or Monument to the Victims of the Holocaust, which takes the form of a monumental railroad goods wagon blown up to giant proportions. Less caustic but just as wry, the Frustration Door, shown at the 1968 Milan Triennale, offers a multitude of handles of which only one will turn the lock. Similarly, the 1969 performance Mobile Office parodies the “utopia” of telecommunications and inflatables with Hollein setting up shop in a phallic see-through cylinder in the middle of a field. Still on the subject of phalluses, the 1965 Retti Candle Store, along with all the other well-known Viennese boutiques, is present as you would expect, but who remembers the surreal 1984 installation The Gymnastics Lesson, or the furniture he designed for Memphis, or the gilded couch and armchair with which he sought to evoke the ghost of Freud? It’s all great fun, and though one can’t help feeling that the scholarly approach sucks out some of the joy, the tongue remains firmly in the cheek. Moreover, for those of an academic bent, the serious and thorough attempt to set Hollein within the multiple movements, ideas, and spheres of influence through which he moved can only be applauded.

Hans Hollein transFORMS at Centre Pompidou, Paris, through June 2