Press Release . . .
Erwin Wurm
05/04 – 31/05/2003
Unlimited Contemporary Art is pleased
to announce the second personal exhibition of Erwin Wurm in
Erwin Wurm is
born in 1954 in
Recent Solo Exhibitions:
2003
Gallery La
Videos,
Ars
Futura,
Unlimited Contemporary Art,
European Dream, Museo
de Arte
Fat Survival, ZKM, Zentrum fur Kunst und Mediatechnologie Karlsruhe, Germany
(29/01-13/04)
2002
Fat Survival, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum
Graz ( new catalogue
edited by Peter Weibel)
Erwin Wurm, Videoarbeiten 1989-2002, Akademie der bildenden Kunste,
Budapest, Hungary
Fat Survival, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris
Fat Car, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Fat Survival, Galleria d’Arte Moderna,
Art:Concept,
Galerie Hausler Contemporary,
Jack Hanley Gallery,
Vendanta Gallery,
Since the late 80’s, by using everyday objects
and the human body as material and by making time an essential part of his
work, E. Wurm has, on one hand, put into question the ways in which sculpture
is traditionnaly conceived: How is it possible to create temporary sculpture,
which is fixed neither in time nor in space? Can sculpture become an everyday
object? At what moment can we say that sculpture becomes performance? Can
sculpture be ephemeral? Can an act become a sculpture?
One the other hand, most of
his work and working methods array themselves like counterpoints to the fetish
principle: dust under glass, which functions as an original and virtually
programmatic metaphor; works intended to be “renewed”; photography used as the
possibilty of infinitely reproducing performance etc…
In other respects, Wurm, by using individuals as sculptural material and by striving for depersonnalisation, is close to the spirit of someone like Beckett and delivers a serious blow to the ethics of Levinas, who pleads for the recognition of the other through the irreducibility of the human face, in particular, and who distrusts any impersonal element that might annihilate the human being. Finally, by partaking of ridicule, absurdity and foolishness – the essential ingredients of his recent works – Wurm contributes to undermining the pathos and drama that are usually associated with artistic process. Like a number of other artists in the 90’s who revived the spirit of Fluxus, Dada and other irreverent currents in modern art, Wurm is part of a movement of desecration which has made it possible to question the figure of the artist as a guide for humanity, as someone separated from the everyday and protected from its vicissitudes.
Elisabeth Wetterwald, in Parachute
No 105, 2002 (excerpt).
Kriezi 1
GR – 10553