Erwin Wurm is a contemporary Austrian artist working across media with a critical approach to visualizing present-day life. Often featuring comic or absurdist elements in his mix of sculpture, painting, performance, video, and photography, the artist acknowledges that “[for me] humor is primarily a method for getting people’s attention—it should ultimately prompt people to look at things more carefully,” and places the viewer’s engagement as the most important ingredient in his art. Born in 1954 in Bruck an der Mur, Austria, Wurm follows in the tradition of Joseph Beuys with ideas around “social sculpture” with his popular One Minute Sculptures series of short performance pieces, inviting audience participation and interaction in a manner similar to Ernesto Neto’s immersive installations.
One Minute Sculptures (on going)
In the series ‘One Minute Sculptures’ by Erwin Wurm viewers are asked to do more than merely look at the museum artworks surrounding them, but to experience the artworks and themselves in new ways. In the form of drawings or brief written directions, the visitor is instructed and encouraged to become an artwork – a ‘One Minute Sculpture’ – for the duration of sixty seconds.
Do it, 1996
Psycho III, 1996
Double Bucket, 1999
Theory of Hope, 2016
Discipline of Subjectivity (2006)
Melting Houses (2005-2010)
Sourced from Erwin Wurm’s Website