14 Oct 2009

Erwin Wurm at Galerie Leu, Munich

Galerie Leu is pleased to announce its forthcoming exhibition Erwin Wurm - works from the 80' until today.

Parallel to Erwin Wurm's solo show at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, which has its focus on works from 2002-2009, Galerie Leu will show a compendium of the most important periods in Wurm's career. Works on display imply some very rare objects from the 80's as well as 'performative photographs', 'pullover-pictures' and 'clothed sculptures'.

Erwin Wurm, one of the most important and internationally famous sculptors, lives and works in Vienna and New York. In his sculptural work, he challenges the term of sculpture and its process within the history of art. For more than 25 years, Wurm has been transforming the common sense of a static sculpture into a dynamic and performative concept. In his 'One Minute Sculptures', for example - farcically comic works - he invites the actual spectator to become a sculpture. Therefore, Wurm directs the spectator to pose with very different kinds of objects just like cloths or fruits. This absurd situations only exists for one minute, what remains are photographs or videos showing a single moment of these performances. An other main issue in Wurm's work is the relation between mass, volume and surface. In his clothed sculptures for example, Wurm 'dresses' canvases, big bubbles as well as iron conduits.

At first, Wurm's complex work seems to be affected by absurd humor, but his ironic productions of political incorrectness and his play with the common association of ridiculousness could also be seen as critical social comment. Wurm himself describes his tenor as „distrust at the defined form'. Thus, his multilateral and thematic stringent work also asks the philosophical question about the being of reality.

Erwin Wurm has exhibited throughout the world in museums such as the MUMOK, Vienna, the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati and the Drawing Center, New York. In 2009-2010, further exhibitions will follow in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, the Essl Museum in Vienna and in the Kunstmuseum, Bonn.