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Erwin Wurm
Erwin Wurm's one minute sculptures can happen anywhere, anytime: on the
street, at home, in a hotel room. The artist explores and expands the
concept and principle of sculpture, through the prism of photography and
performance. He works to invigorate the static, unchanging art object
by introducing ideas of process, action and the living body into
sculpture, as did before him many others, from Richard Serra to Bruce
Nauman, Gilbert and George to Charles Ray, ever since Marcel Duchamp
selected his first "readymade" and speeded up the process of making
sculpture.
Wurm moves one step further in that he redefines the relationship between time and sculptural form: Spontaneity and brevity are key to his artistic vision, as is the idea of endless permutation and proliferation at the expense of a final, fixed form. Many works exist in the form of written or drawm instructions. Anyone can follwo the instructions and is able to recreate an Erwin Wurm sculpture. Press-ups on cups, lean against cleaning things, asparagus noses, orange-loungers, magic broomstick-flights, everything is possible ... for a minute. Wurm works in his photographs and videos the ground-zero into sculpture, he plunges the depth of the impossible with wit and obvious enjoyment. Contrary to Duchamp, Wurm designs not readymades, sculptures fixed into an unchanging form, but works that are constantly ready-to-be-made. |
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Described as "sculptural variant of situation
comedy" the effects seem to be similar: sometimes funny, often
ridiculous on the surface but with a traumatically frightening
background. He documents the difficulties of life, that remain the same,
whether one deals with them philosophically or via dietetics. On a
metaphorical level, they can be read in terms of the momentary successes
and inevitable failures that tend to define all of human life. Wurm
also points to the awkwardness and limits of the human body and psyche,
in relation to the things which surround it.
(text by Kate Bush, Erwin Wurm, Photographers' Gallery, december 7 to january 21, 2001, London, (p.03)) Click here to read an article about an Erwin Wurm show in Paris (2002) from The Guardian |
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