EVENT LANGUAGE: GERMAN

ERWIN WURM – THE RETROSPECTIVE ON HIS 70TH BIRTHDAY

Erwin Wurm (*1954 Bruck/Mur) is one of the most successful and best-known international artists of our time. To mark his 70th birthday, this presentation brings together key works from important stages of his multifaceted oeuvre for the first time. The exhibition spans from his beginnings in the 1980s to works shown here for the first time and works created especially for this occasion. Sculptures, drawings and instructions, videos and photographs invite us to illuminate the paradoxes and absurdities of our world.

In his artistic method, Erwin Wurm examines the concept of the sculptural and introduces it as a yardstick by which to measure our contemporary world. The boundaries between the traditional concepts of sculpture, performance, photography or painting are called into question, just as statics and movement within a work of art are redefined. Wurm overturns the usual perception of the reality that surrounds us and his artworks open up opportunities to raise new perspectives and questions: What happens if I disregard gravity, what if houses start to melt or are squashed by performative interventions? How do bodies and spaces behave when absurd and paradoxical things exist in them? How can you become part of a work of art for a brief moment in the One Minute Sculptures, and how does that feel? As the artist himself explains, it is always about the concept of the sculptural in relation to the social. For example, a pickle can certainly be declared a self-portrait, or a lavish luxury car like the Fat Car a symbol of greed, excess and commodity fetishism in our society. On the other hand, the Narrow House conceptually reflects the narrowness of bourgeois thought and behaviour and the narrowness of social norms, whether through religion, convention or staged pathos. In addition, a rural school is presented here for the first time, which stands for restrictive and now outdated ideas and represents a further symbol of restrictive and judgemental models of thought.

Erwin Wurm remains committed to his claim of working innovatively with the sculptural parameters of envelope, mass, skin, volume and time in his new works: His new series, such as Substitutes, Skins or Flat Sculptures, illustrate the extent to which the artist continues to rethink and redesign the existing and invites us as viewers on this shared journey of discovery through his intellectual and artistic freedom.

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