Erwin Wurm turns 70
The paradoxical world of the Styrian star artist
Erwin Wurm is Austria's most successful living artist. Today, Friday, the Styrian celebrates his 70th birthday. He has long since shed his image as a "funny artist".
If Erwin Wurm's father, a gendarme from Graz, had had his way, his son, born in 1954, would never have become an artist. In the staid post-war period, he could not imagine this vocation for his son - Erwin Wurm nevertheless pursued it via numerous detours.
Decades later, as a celebrated artist, he addressed the narrowness of the post-war period, which Wurm felt in his youth, in one of his most personal works: "Narrow House" (2010) is a version of the house in which he grew up, squeezed to a width of one meter. The sculpture is a tragic-ironic visualization of the oppressive security of his youth - from which he had to break out in order to become world-famous.
Personal crisis triggers wave of success
The path to this fame was only really set in motion by a personal crisis: After many years as a moderately successful artist, Wurm found himself in a life crisis in 1997 following a divorce and the death of his parents: he was asked to develop a new work for an exhibition in Bremen - and came up with the idea (born out of necessity) for the "One Minute Sculptures": he wrote instructions on how visitors could transform themselves into living sculptures using a few objects lying around the venue.
The work was a hit and made him a celebrated art star - in 2003, the Red Hot Chili Pepper also used the idea for their music video for "Don't Stop" - it was a pop-cultural ennoblement of the Styrian.
Anything can be a sculpture
The "One Minute Sculptures" also make Wurm realize that you can make a sculpture out of anything: "Suddenly the world was like a big quarry," he once said. Since then, he has been chipping out one iconic work after another from this quarry: With his "Fat Cars" and "Fat Houses", he blows up the status symbols of the bourgeoisie to bursting point. He has single-family houses balancing on the edge of the roof of the mumok in Vienna, sails a bent boat onto the roof of a Viennese hotel, portrays himself as a "vinegar pickle" or wraps a government room in Graz Castle in a cozy "wall sweater".
He has always pursued a clear artistic goal: to make the absurd and paradoxical in life visible. The fact that humor was a good tool for this earned Wurm the reputation of being the "funniest artist in the world". When you look back on his work today, on his 70th birthday, you have to say: there is so much more to it than just humor.
All this can be explored from September 13 at the Albertina Vienna, which is dedicating a major solo exhibition to the Styrian art star on his birthday. A major biography of Wurm by Rainer Metzger was also published in spring.
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