PRESENTATION: Erwin Wurm
Erwin Wurm came to prominence with his “One Minute Sculptures”, a project that he began in 1996/1997. In these works, Wurm gives written or drawn instructions to participants that indicate actions or poses to perform with everyday objects such as chairs, buckets, fruit, or knit sweaters. These sculptures are by nature ephemeral, and by incorporating photography and performance into the process Wurm challenges the formal qualities of the medium as well as the boundaries between performance and daily life and spectator and participant.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Gallery
Erwin Wurm considers the physical act of gaining and losing weight a sculptural gesture, and often creates the illusion of bodily growth or shrinkage in his work. While Wurm considers humor an important tool in his work, there is always an underlying social critique of contemporary culture, particularly in response to the capitalist influences and resulting societal pressures that the artist sees as contrary to our internal ideals. Wurm emphasizes this dichotomy by working within the liminal space between high and low and merging genres to explore what he views as a farcical and invented reality. Erwin Wurm solo exhibition is offering a glimpse into the many bodies of work that comprise the artist’s remarkable, decades-long career. Working across a variety of media, including photography, performance, painting, text, video, and most notably, sculpture, Wurm is interested in the absurdity and paradoxes that can be found in the mundane scenarios of daily life. The artist is best known for his “One Minute Sculptures”, an ongoing series in which he provides instructions to participants to perform awkward poses with everyday objects—from placing a bag over one’s head to balancing teacups on the sole of each foot. Through his often ironic or seemingly humorous work, Wurm confronts expectations about what sculpture should be and explores new possibilities for the medium through experiments with volume, surface, duration, and durability. This presentation features a series of photographs created on the occasion of Wurm’s solo exhibition, “One Minute in Taipei”, mounted at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2020. Made in collaboration with Vogue, each image captures a unique “One Minute Sculpture”. In these works, Wurm outfits a pair of cucumbers in Gucci sneakers, stuffs a zipped up jacket with fresh lettuce, and puts designer glasses on a bubblegum pink watering can, resulting in images that are both delightful and absurd. Although Wurm utilises fragile produce as a primary material in many of these pieces, each work is immortalized through a c-print photograph—allowing these one minute sculptures to endure far beyond their typical shelf life. Also on view are a selection of Wurm’s handbag sculptures. The works in this series reflect the artist’s belief that objects are often extensions of their owners or used to project ideas about personal identity. Here, Wurm takes designer handbags as his subject—luxury goods often acquired to serve as symbols of sophistication, wealth, and social status, and frequently seen by their owners as extensions of themselves. Wurm anthropomorphizes the bags by giving them legs, complicating the already precarious line between person- and objecthood, and providing a subtle critique of contemporary culture. The presentation also debuts a selection of new paintings—which the artist refers to as the “Fat Series” in which words like “SOFT,” “CAST,” and “MELT” appear to be confined inside the edges of the canvas. Wurm considers these works to be two-dimensional sculptures, and the series continues his career-long exploration into the medium’s possibilities, definition, and language. The text in each work refers to objects and concepts Wurm has engaged throughout his oeuvre, with “melt” recalling his sculptures of oozing architecture, for example, or “soft” suggesting Wurm’s text-based works made from stitched wool on canvas.
Photo: Erwin Wurm, Untitled (Taipei), 2020, C-Print, 78.74 x 52.49 inches, 200 x 133.33 cm, © Erwin Wurm, Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery
Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 247 Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, FL, USA, Duration: 7/1-6/2/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-17:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com
