Erwin Wurm
Philosophy sires an absurdist take on life in the sculptures of Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, from fat cars to thin houses to audiences instructed to turn themselves into an artwork.
Image credit: Erwin Wurm, Fat Car (Convertible), 2005, styrofoam, polyester, car, 130 × 469 × 239 cm, Ed. 3 of 3 + 2 AP. Courtesy the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac, London
Sculpture was a forced marriage for Austrian artist Erwin Wurm. Enrolling in art school in Vienna as a young man, he wanted to be a painter, already dealing with the puzzlement of a policeman father and housewife mother with little interest in art. Forced into the course he would never have chosen proved to be both a lesson in the absurdity of life and a gift that helped him to see sculpture in the everyday. Now, Wurm’s career-making sculptures of fat cars, thin houses and giant sausages may seem larger than life, but his ethos is grounded in examining human foibles and discomfiture.
Consider, for instance, his famed One Minute Sculptures. Breaking the barrier between viewer and art, he issues props and instructions to members of the public, requesting they hold specific positions for a minute. “This came out of a tragic moment in my life,” Wurm, a father of three, tells VAULT via video conference from his studio in a big 12th-century house in Lindberg, about an hour’s drive from Vienna, where he also keeps an apartment with his second wife, Elise,
who works on his catalogue and website.
“I had a terrible divorce and my parents died. It was traumatic, and I was very down. I always had this idea I wanted to realise of short-living sculptures, [questioning] the notion of sculpture: if I stand straight and still, it’s an action, but can it also be a sculpture [and if so] what do I have to do to transfer an action into a sculpture? What are the coordinates to realise this?... Subscribe to read all articles in full
