The Artist Who Swallowed The World
1 March – 12 May 2008

Curated by Roland Wäspe

What could have motivated the gray-haired gentleman to stick fiber pens into his body orifices and to clamp roll film canisters into his eyes like monocles? It is precisely these kinds of absurd moments that the work of Vienna-based artist Erwin Wurm, who became famous with his One Minute Sculptures, aims to capture.

Friends and acquaintances were asked to perform actions for a minute following instructions—as if they were a momentary human sculpture: whether it was sitting on a carpet thinking about Spinoza for a minute, putting on a sweater backwards or standing on a pedestal for a brief moment with a coat hanger and shirt in their mouth.

Erwin Wurm once described his work as 'sculptures with embarrassments'. He stages the profound madness in a congenial way: when cars bulge out of their shape, trucks climb the walls or a staid suburban house falls onto the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna. Wurm is always concerned with sculptural questions, with transformations of volumes that open up a surprisingly new view of the world.

The exhibition, created in cooperation with the MUMOK—Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, offers the opportunity to encounter the work of one of the most important artists of our time: The Artist Who Swallowed the World.

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