Erwin Wurm

(Bruck an der Mur, Austria, 1954 - )

Austrian

Erwin Wurm graduated from University of Graz, Austria, in 1977, and University of Applied Art and Academy of Fine Art, Vienna in 1982. He started gaining prominence with his “One Minute Sculptures” series, starting in 1996. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, United Kingdom (2023); Suwon Museum of Art, Suwon, South Korea (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia (2022); Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2020); Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2019); Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, France (2019); The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria (2018); Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern, Switzerland (2018); Public Art Fund, New York, NY (2018); Ayala Museum, Manila, Philippines (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, Poland (2013); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2012); and Dallas Contemporary, TX (2012). He has participated in two Venice Biennales: at the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti in 2011 and as the representative for Austria in 2017. 

Wurm’s artwork can be found in collections worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France; National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan; Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Türkiye; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; the Albertina, Vienna, Austria; Tate Modern, London, UK; MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.  

Thaddeus Ropac, one of the galleries that represents Wurm, describes his career this way: 

Over the course of his career, Erwin Wurm has radically expanded conceptions of sculpture, space and the human form. His sculptures straddle abstraction and representation, presenting familiar objects in a surprising and inventive way that prompts viewers to consider them in a new light. He often explores mundane, everyday decisions as well as existential questions in his works, focusing on the objects that help us cope with daily life and through which we ultimately define ourselves. These include the material objects that surround us—the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the food we eat and the homes we live in. 

With his “One Minute Sculptures”—in which, using simple props, the viewer becomes the artwork for a limited time—Wurm erases the boundary between sculpture and viewer. The static presence of the sculpture is reversed, becoming instead a participatory process that incorporates the viewer’s own body. The ephemerality of these works subverts the permanence of traditional sculpture, with 'one minute' denoting the brevity of the action rather than a literal timeframe. There is often a contemplative or philosophical dimension to the One Minute Sculptures, which act as catalysts for a moment of introspection by placing the viewer in an awkward or paradoxical relationship to the prescribed objects.

Vienna, Austria

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