Erwin Wurm — À propos — Slash Paris

“My work is about the drama of the pettiness of existence, whether one approaches it through philosophy or through a diet. In the end we always draw the short straw”.

Erwin Wurm

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Erwin Wurm was born in 1954. He lives and works in Vienna and in Limberg/Lower Austria. During the 1990s, he attracted much attention with his “One-Minute Sculptures”. Following the artist’s partly written and partly pictorial instructions, visitors to the exhibition could themselves briefly become sculptures, by taking up often absurd poses frequently involving everyday objects — especially clothing — such as the knitted pullovers, frequently recurring in his works. Clothing as a sculptural theme, the second skin, the protective shell, the outline, and also the filling out of a volume is of prime importance in Erwin Wurm’s complex work, which includes performance, video, photography, drawing and classical sculpture, in combination and interdependence. Time is a further important factor which he explores in all kinds of different ways: from the shortest-lived works , the “dust sculptures”, through large-scale installations, in which fixed architectural components are dressed in knitted pullovers, to the performative “One-Minute Sculptures”.Wurm understands the concept of sculpture as the pre-modern premise that sculpture is concerned with the alteration of mass and volume. In this respect, he describes humans gaining or losing weight as a sculptural act. His artistic expression, rather like the comic strip or science fiction images, is clear and simple, readily accessible to a wide public. At the same time, he makes use of cynical criticism. Individuality as a projection from outside.

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