Every time Erwin Wurm produces a sculpture from a real object—cars, shoes, pieces of clothing—he creates something strange and wonderful, inviting us to consider different possibilities for the ordinary and familiar. His experiments in performance, photography, installation, drawing, video, and text have continually pushed the boundaries of sculpture, and yet his focus on volume, skin, and material form stem from an ongoing fascination with Greek and Roman sculpture, the body, and a concern for the human condition.
Wurm, who lives and works in Austria, first drew attention in the late 1990s with his interactive “One Minute Sculptures,” which came complete with instructions to guide participants through unusual uses of simple objects and forms. From a compressed house and a fattened car to gherkin self-portraits, living/speaking “word sculptures,” and three-dimensional speech bubbles, his works search for the absurdities and insights lurking just beneath the surface of conventional reality.
Robert Preece: You cite Fabio Getting Dressed (1992), a series of photographs featuring a figure dressed in a ridiculous amount of clothing, as a key to your work. Why is that?
Erwin Wurm: My main interests are the notion of sculpture and its relation to social issues. This began after I was not accepted in the academy painting class. They decided to put me in the sculpture class instead. My main questions then were: What do I do here, and what will I do in the future? This unexpected situation very much oriented the direction of my research. . .
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