Erwin Wurm: How It Is

Zuzeum Art Centre presents Erwin Wurm’s first solo show in Latvia. Wurm (b. 1954, lives and works in Vienna and Limberg) is considered one of the most influential European sculptors of the last few decades. The exhibition showcases his works from different periods, presenting a unique perspective on the artist’s singular mix of figuration, philosophy, and the absurd.

Armed with the motto 'everything is connected to everything else', Wurm thinks of the human body as a malleable, open-ended connector between the organic and the human-made, the perks of consumer culture and the stalemates of conspicuous consumption. 

The title of the show, How It Is, is taken from Samuel Beckett’s 1962 novel of the same name. The eponymous sculpture from 2024 – one of the more complex pieces the artist has created – belongs to the series of One Minute Sculptures, which Wurm began in the late 1990s. This series, presented in a separate gallery, invites the audience to transform themselves into living sculptures by following the artist’s specific instructions and performing simple gestures with everyday objects. A selection of One Minute Sculptures is complemented by several photographs showing the sculptures in their activated state.

At the centre of the exhibition is the iconic sculpture Fat Convertible (2005) – an exaggeratedly distorted sports car whose bloated form is both paradoxical and unsettling. The work reflects on questions of status symbols, consumer culture, and bodily perception, without offering a straightforward critique. Instead, Wurm transforms everyday objects through formal exaggeration into sculptural commentaries on the relationship between humans and objects.

Other works in the exhibition showcase Erwin Wurm’s extensive vocabulary of forms to exceptional effect, combining a philosophical pursuit of fundamental questions about the human condition with a taste for ironic and absurd juxtapositions.