Gestural ceramic sculptures are the focus of the MAK exhibition, presenting Erwin Wurm’s sculptural series Dissolution (2018–2020) in a museum context for the first time. With Dissolution, Wurm sets out in search of a creative process that cannot be completely controlled. The word “dissolution” has connotations of disintegration, decay, decomposition, and vanishing boundaries. The sculptures—with their protruding fingers, hands, lips, mouths, breasts, bellies, navels, noses, and ears—force their way out of a mass of clay. In these sculptural forms Wurm combines realism with abstraction.

The sculptural body segments invade the Geymüllerschlössel’s interior, creating tableaux vivants—dramaturgical arrangements located between movement and stasis, history and the present—in individual rooms and salons: the entrance hall, the library, the music room, the cupola room, the bedroom, the oriental room, and before a wallpaper panorama reflecting the weltanschauung of European colonialism.

In the garden of the Schlössel, Erwin Wurm’s sculptures of Carrara marble connect up with the artist’s role in critically illuminating and distorting our world.

Curators:
Bärbel Vischer, Curator MAK Contemporary Art Collection
Rainald Franz, Curator MAK Glass and Ceramics Collection

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Exhibition Dates 8 May – 5 Dec 2021
Open Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
More information at www.MAK.at/en/geymuellerschloessel
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Kindly supported by Dorotheum

Thanks to Thaddaeus Ropac
London Paris Salzburg