Shaping the moment and the sense of the absurd. Erwin Wurm’s 70th-Birthday Retrospective at the ALBERTINA MODERN.

Erwin Wurm is one of today’s most successful and best-known international contemporary artists. His approach examines the sculptural concept, introducing it as a measure to gauge our modern world. Erwin Wurm. A 70th-Birthday Retrospective exhibition at the ALBERTINA MODERN in Vienna unfolds a first-ever comprehensive survey of key works and important stations of Wurm’s multifaceted oeuvre. 

The artistic versatility at display

The exhibition at the ALBERTINA MODERN on the occasion of his 70th birthday is the result of a decades-long mutual bond between the ALBERTINA and the uniquely versatile artist that Erwin Wurm is. The exhibit extends from his beginnings in the 1980s to works shown for the first time or created especially for the Vienna show, bringing together major works from all stages of Wurm’s career. Sculptures, drawings and instructions, videos and photographs invite contemplating the paradoxes and absurdities of our world. Alongside these are works which helped him achieve international fame, such as the One Minute Sculptures, the Fat Car and a Narrow House. In total, art enthusiasts are given the opportunity to see 170 works of the artist.

Erwin Wurm explains that it is always about the concept of the sculptural in relation to the social. It is about scrutinising the structures of our society, which also manifest themselves in the forms of our everyday objects. As such, the artist gives shape to the moment and the sense of the absurd that it reveals. His entire oeuvre revolves around the realisation that we search in vain for a meaning to life. On top of that, the exhibit shows a rural school for the first time, which stands for restrictive and outdated ideas and is another symbol of restrictive and judgemental models of thought. Hence, Wurm’s works illustrate how much it is about discovery – constantly rethinking and redesigning the existing and our existing structures. 

Also, in his recent works, Wurm stays committed to pursuing an innovative take on the sculptural parameters of hull, mass, skin, volume, and time. His new series, Substitutes, Skins, and Flat Sculptures, delve into how the artist makes a point of rethinking and reshaping the world of existing things, taking the viewers on a journey of discovery of open territories of thought and art. 

The boundaries of surfaces and textures

Among the works presented at the exhibition, a group of works named Dust Sculptures explores the boundaries of the form. Mind Bubbles, in which comic-like figures give physical substance to the abstract construct of the thought, can be read as an artistic expression of the dynamics of the human thinking process. Along Melting Houses, which introduces the aspect of destruction as a form of artistic expression, there is also a group of works entitled Performative Sculptures, where sculptural work is understood as a performative act. 

Wurm sees clothing as both a second skin and a means of self-expression of personality, personified through a prestigious object with cult status, particularly coveted in our consumer society. In his Balzac sculpture, Erwin Wurm takes a critical look at the issue of compulsive consumerism and uncontrolled buying behaviour. The most recent Neuroses series presents a wide variety of seating furniture over which textiles are stretched as an outer layer like skin. While clothing is a person’s second skin, the house is a third protective shell – the exhibit presents this recurring motif in the artist’s oeuvre with, for instance, a massively inflated Fat House. 

Wurm also uses the textiles as a motif for a protective layer for the human psyche. In a group of works entitled Dreamers, the artist explores the realm of dreams, complex and unreal and almost intangible as it seems. Delving into the psyche, Self-Portrait as Pickles shows how the everyday unique specimens transform into an art object.

Last but not least, the Skins group of works present new sculptural spatial experiences and conceptual designs, marking a new approach in Wurm’s ongoing exploration of what constitutes a sculpture, characterised by the search for new ways to deconstruct the sculptural. Flat Sculptures, Wurm’s panel paintings are composed of letters, sometimes blown up almost beyond readability, where both colour and language become sculpture. While One Minute Sculptures explores the boundaries between humans and objects, as well as paradoxes and contradictions. In international contemporary art, the One Minute Sculptures, which Wurm keeps developing further in ever-new groups of works, represent a ground-breaking expansion of the very concept of sculpture.

That’s what this Retrospective is – the versatile display of sculpture exploration without boundaries. A true gem for both fans of Erwin Wurm and those just on the threshold of their journey within the artist’s mind. 

---

‘Erwin Wurm. A 70-th Birthday Retrospective’

ALBERTINA MODERN, Vienna

13.09.2024–9.03.2025

More