Hold on to your pickles and buckle up your Fat Cars—Erwin Wurm is back, and this time, it's for his 70th birthday retrospective at ALBERTINA MODERN. The man who once redefined the humble gherkin as a self-portrait is inviting us all to embrace the absurd, the squished, and the slightly surreal from 13 September 2024.
Wurm has made a career out of asking the important questions in life: What if a house could be put on a diet? Why not wear your hoodie like a sculpture? And can a human being become art for just one minute? These aren’t just musings; they’re the kind of realities you’ll face when you step into Wurm’s world, a place where traditional boundaries between sculpture, performance, photography, and even painting are just suggestions.
The Sculptor Who Melts Minds (and Houses)
In Wurm’s universe, gravity is more of an opinion than a law. His infamous Narrow House squeezes the concept of bourgeois existence into a claustrophobic space that’s part commentary, part carnival funhouse. It’s like suburbia went through a taffy puller. Meanwhile, his Fat Car feels like the automotive equivalent of post-holiday guilt—bloated, excessive, and undeniably symbolic of modern consumerism’s love affair with excess.
But Wurm doesn’t just stop at physical objects. His works often engage with the body, like the momentary magic of his One Minute Sculptures, where viewers become participants, striking poses that make them part of the artwork. For 60 seconds, you are both artist and art—a fleeting collision of the mundane and the profound. It’s as if performance art decided to stop taking itself so seriously and started inviting everyone to the party.
What’s New? Skins, Ghosts, and Flat Thoughts
Wurm’s latest works take us even deeper into his playful exploration of form, space, and, well, the slightly unnerving. His Substitutes series ditches the body entirely, leaving clothes behind as ghostly reminders of what used to fill them, like the aftermath of an existential laundry day. His Skins are skeletal traces of corporeal presence, transforming space into a minimalist dance of lines and echoes.
Then there’s his Flat Sculptures—a cheeky nod to his early desire to be a painter. These aren’t your typical paintings. No, Wurm takes letters, squashes them into unrecognizable forms, and makes you work for your reading. He breaks tradition by turning flat canvases into sprawling, three-dimensional landscapes of compressed thought, a sort of intellectual origami for those willing to unfold it.
From Dust to Dust (Sculptures)
The retrospective doesn’t just stop with Wurm’s well-known works. It pulls from the deepest corners of his artistic mind, showcasing his early wood and dust sculptures—pieces that hint at his fascination with mass, volume, and the invisible forces that shape our world. These lesser-seen works are the foundation of Wurm’s current obsession with reimagining everything, from household items to cultural norms, as potential sculptures.
The Art of the Absurd
For Wurm, art isn’t just something to look at; it’s something to experience, question, and occasionally laugh at. His works hold a mirror up to society’s quirks—our consumerism, our desire to conform, and our constant need to push against those very same forces. Whether it's a pickle declared as a self-portrait or a luxury car that looks like it swallowed too many status symbols, Wurm is always asking us to consider the paradoxes of modern life.
Summa summarum, as Wurm celebrates his 70th birthday, Albertina Modern invites us to dive into the absurdity and emerge with new perspectives. Perhaps we’ll leave understanding that everything—whether it’s a house, a car, or even a pickle—has the potential to be more than it seems.
Just don’t be surprised if you walk out feeling a bit like a One Minute Sculpture yourself.
---
Words by AW.
Photo courtesy of Markus Gradwohl.
Comments