Erwin Wurm - Collection Wien Energie Fernwaerme. (de) - a podcast by CastYourArt.com

Erwin Wurm at Fernwaerme Wien.

Wien Energie Fernwärme added selected works by Erwin Wurm to its collection
Erwin Wurm is one of the most important contemporary Austrian artists; his works have been exhibited in eminent international art fairs.
The “one minute sculptures” he has been producing since the late 1990ies belong to his most famous works. These “sculptures” exist for a minute and are performed either by the spectators or the artist himself, involving elements and actions that are often comical: Balancing objects on their heads or having pens stuck between the toes, in postures impossible to maintain for a longer time. The classical properties of a sculpture are thus presented in a new, grotesque and parodic manner. These ephemeral episodes are documented by video and photography.

Rather than an object on a pedestal, sculptures are a corpus of open operating instructions for Worm. Video and photography are a means of the sculpture and the sculpture itself an object of utility. The producing of sculptures with the participation of the spectator to be photographed is a means to transgress boundaries. These short-lived works are based on the idea on the transitory and play on the notions defining sculpture: permanency, tradition, and historical memory... all essential to the traditional notion of sculpture.

From the outset he is interested in the conception of sculpture, in what it is, in what it means. By converging it with objects of utility he approaches it to everyday life and reflects on volume, weight, balance and form beyond the pedestal.
By means of distortion in some sculptures and absurd situations in some photographs he punctures the screen of our world view in order to reach a new dimension of reality. Humor is also a way of expressing things in his work and to remove some of the solemnity of artworks, even though the reception of such humor can vary enormously from culture to culture.
He creates pieces that are not bound to the physical reality of the three dimensions, but to an imaginary reality arising from the feelings, thoughts and the effects of social conditions.

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas said that „every work of art is a sculpture, a statue where time has been frozen“. Because of their depiction of the three dimensions the limits of the picture are tangent to the sculpture. On one hand Wurm’s photographs are still hanged on the wall and their object character is evident, on the other hand his photographs are protocols of transitory sculptures, as in this case - actions.

It is however the thought and not the deed that is at the origin of Wurm’s works, to analyze the concept of continuity of the piece, the perception initial point of time is to be found at where the artistic form ends.
The objects switch their function and the spectators change their mindset and their direction. The senses are put to the test and the visitor vacillates between perplexity and laughter. A parallel world is being created in which the artist’s questions approximate the questions of philosophy. Where are we? Who are we, and why? Where is the restroom? In the end the philosopher as well as the artist is doomed to failure in the search, even if they both have their own truth.

Wurm’s oeuvre is apparently defined by certain concepts which are not set out in isolation, but have to be examined in their combination, quasi as cause and effect.
The dynamics between form and matter, the potentialities of the material, the relation between sculpture and non-sculptural object, the body as medium and the notion of transformation. These sculptural concepts almost always appear in Erwin Wurm's varied works, although he intends to take them to the boundary of their meaning and questions the most essential category that defines sculpture as artistic form of expression: its own durability. (ca)

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