b.1954, Bruck an der Mur

Tennis balls, fruit, a kitchen sponge; to Erwin Wurm all things propose themselves as art objects. His works are wonderfully eclectic, materially various and seldom self-serious. Many exist as suggestions, inviting the audience to perform as sculpture using the props provided – jamming two legs in one sweater sleeve, wearing a chair, lying under a suitcase. To Wurm, these moments of participation are primarily sculptural, each a spatial experiment in composition and form. Other similarly performative works persist only as film or photograph; the artist’s friend dons thirteen pullovers with increasing difficulty, a museum director is composed with pens and permanent markers in nostrils and ears (in his mouth, a stapler). To this repertoire of impermanent gestures, Wurm adds more concrete offerings, more sculptural sculptures, among them oversized effigies of gherkins, headless figures, and a series of swelling vehicles collected under the title Fat Cars. In all the variability of his work, the artist’s singular humour is alone consistent; his delight in the absurd in turns amusing and vaguely discomforting.