Offsite: Erwin Wurm

×

Expand

Daniel Portnoy

Erwin Wurm, "Big Disobedience," 2016

(installation view, Collins Park, Miami Beach, 2016)aluminum, paintCourtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul Photo: Daniel Portnoy

The Vancouver Art Gallery announces the 19th installation of its public art series, Offsite: Erwin Wurm, on view September 20, 2019 to February 23, 2020. Three works by the famed Austrian artist best known for his One Minute Sculptures will be presented at 1100 West Georgia Street. Produced in 2016, Wurm’s Big Disobedience, Half Big Suit and Flat Iron demonstrate the artist’s manipulation of material and human forms to alter their meaning while confronting social norms with savvy wit and cynicism.

“From Elizabeth Zvonar’s large-scale collage, to Shigeru Ban’s award-winning structures, the Gallery has showcased a long list of diverse and thought-provoking public artworks in Vancouver by way of our Offsite presentations,” says Daina Augaitis, Interim Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery. “In the realm of outdoor art, Erwin Wurm is recognized globally for his bold explorations of the sculptural form. The scale of his works coupled with their striking colour and peculiar design have a strong impact on our perceptions of the body in space. We look forward to the reactions of local visitors.”

From House Attack (2006), a family home installed on the outside facade of Vienna’s MUMOK as though it were a bomb, to the eighteen-foot Big Kastenman (2012), an inanimate figure with legs and square torso of pink and grey suit outside New York’s Standard Hotel, Wurm moulds uncanny versions of objects, houses, cars and more. Such works challenge how we see the world, often with the effect of stopping passersby in their tracks. While Wurm considers humour an important tool in his work, there is always an underlying social critique of contemporary culture.

In reference to Henry David Thoreau's essay “Civil Disobedience” (1849), Wurm’s Big Disobedience (2016) engages on themes of political and social correctness.  Utilizing human form and apparel, Half Big Suit (2016) stems from an earlier series, Cut, that investigates the fragmented body. Fixed in an awkward position, with one leg extended in the air, the static sculpture conveys a sense of distress experienced while holding a lengthy pose. In their focus on the body and its motions, these works relate to Wurm’s One Minute Sculpturesseries, in which viewers enact simple yet abnormal poses for one minute at a time.

Wurm’s Flat Iron (2016) further speaks to the relationship between the organic transformation of the body through biological factors and the intentional moulding of objects. This distorted recreation of New York’s iconic Flatiron Building portrays the structure as melting, demonstrating how manipulation of volume, scale, form and materiality can signal transformation, albeit a physical impossibility in the real world. 

As an art world phenomenon, Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures brought him into the international spotlight. As part of a performative project, these works, which he began developing in 1996, position subjects as inanimate objects with chairs, buckets, fruit, or knit sweaters and were the inspiration behind the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ 2002 music video for Can’t Stop. Wurm has created new works as part of this series nearly every year since he started with various versions presented as far as Australia, Greece and Hong Kong. In a recent CNN Style interview, Wurm describes One Minute Sculptures: "The idea is for you to exist in this dimension -- as an art object yourself -- only at this one time…I am giving 'sculpture' a participatory, temporal factor -- one that I guide."

Inspired by Wurm’s performative practice, the Gallery invited Mike Bourscheid, an artist who works between Luxembourg and Vancouver, to develop a series of performative interventions at Offsite: Erwin Wurm.  Bourschied, who holds a Master’s of Fine Arts from the University of Arts Berlin (UdK) translates his heritage through sculpture, photography and performance. Bourscheid’s first performance will coincide with the exhibition opening on September 19. Please consult the Gallery’s website vanartgallery.bc.ca  for future updates on the performance schedule.

About the artist

Erwin Wurm, born 1954 in Bruck an der Mur/Styria, Austria, lives and works in Vienna and Limberg, Austria. Wurm graduated from University of Graz, Austria, in 1977, and Gestaltungslehre University of Applied Art and Academy of Fine Art, Vienna in 1982. His work has been presented in major solo and group exhibitions throughout North America, Europe and Asia. It is included in the permanent collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, among many museums worldwide.

About Offsite

Offsite is the Vancouver Art Gallery’s outdoor public art space located at 1100 West Georgia Street between Thurlow and Bute Streets, west of the Shangri-La Hotel, in downtown Vancouver. Presenting an innovative program of temporary projects, it is a site for local and international contemporary artists to exhibit works related to the surrounding urban context. Featured artists consider the site-specific potential of art within the public realm and respond to the changing social and cultural conditions of our contemporary world. New projects are installed in the spring and fall. Offsite: Erin Wurm is the 19th Offsite installation of this series.