Erwin Wurm Surrogates

Surrogates, an exhibition of new work by Erwin Wurm, embodies the Austrian artist’s characteristically explorative approach to the concept of sculpture. Disrupting traditional distinctions between subject and object, the human and the non-human, spectator and participant, the exhibition renders the familiar unfamiliar through a playful treatment of the sculptural principles of ‘two- and three-dimensionality, mass, volume, skin and surface, movement and time.’

On view concurrently with Wurm’s major institutional survey at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, the exhibition presents painted metal and epoxy resin sculptures alongside key developments in his iconic One Minute Sculptures.

Watch the artist speak about the exhibition

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It’s very simple: we are bodies first, though we consist of mental qualities and spiritual qualities and psychological qualities… And the body is our first measure of relation to the rest of the world.
— Erwin Wurm

Clothing has been a key source of inspiration for the artist since the late 1980s. ‘Clothes are our second skin, a shell that separates our bodies from the outside world,’ he says. Inspired by his observation that classical bronze sculptures are hollow, Wurm plays with ideas of volume to create works from thin, skin-like membranes of painted aluminium, as represented by the disembodied clothed figures of his Substitutes series.

 

First conceived in 2022, the hollow, deflated clothes of the Substitutes separate the hidden internal volume of the sculpture from the external space in which they stand. The garments, pose and (often monochromatic) colour palette of each sculpture highlight the particular social values we might ascribe to how an individual presents themselves. The sculptures become ‘substitutes’ or ‘surrogates’ for the human body, whose volume, mass and form are defined by the second skin of the aluminium clothes.

Erwin Wurm

Straight Blue (Substitutes), 2024 

Aluminium, acrylic paint 

190 x 22 x 60 cm (74.80 x 8.66 x 23.62 in)
Edition of 3

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For Wurm, the idea of substitution stands as a form of social commentary that cuts through his humorous treatment of the objects of daily life. Rendering the body absent, he calls attention to the role of the individual in rapidly changing social, political and environmental conditions, particularly the potential absence of humanity in post-anthropocentric futures. In the exhibition, the absurd becomes a tool through which he asks us to ‘look at the world from a different perspective’ and take ‘paradoxical angles’ as we imagine alternative ways of being.

Erwin Wurm

Still Red Small (Substitutes), 2024
Aluminium, acrylic paint
100 x 35 x 20 cm (39.37 x 13.77 x 7.87 in)
Edition of 5

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In Balzac (2023), a pile of clothes and bags are draped upon a body whose form is enlarged and partially distorted as they either consume, or are consumed by, the garments. Wurm titled the work following his observation that the form of the sculpture evokes the semi-abstract monolith of Auguste Rodin’s Monument to Balzac (1891–97), in which the body of the French novelist is engulfed in the flowing structure of his overgarment. Inspired by the myth that the French sculptor soaked the writer’s dressing gown in plaster to dress the monumental form, Wurm too explores the sculptural potential of clothing as a means to change the volume of the human body.

 

Erwin Wurm

Balzac (After Rodin), 2023
Aluminium, paint
185 x 100 x 70 cm  (72.83 x 39.37 x 27.55 in)
Edition of 3

 

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I wanted to create a figure where you cannot see a human being but you get this idea of a person. — Erwin Wurm
 

Erwin Wurm, Trap of the Truth, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, installation view, 2023. Photo © Jonty Wilde

Just as Wurm has previously added volume to cars and houses to reconfigure our relationship to the objects as capitalist status symbols, in Paradise I (Idea of a High Heel Big) (2024), the form of a high-heeled shoe is swollen almost beyond recognition. With its new inflated appearance – and emphasised by its peachy colour – the form assumes a flesh-like quality that destabilises ontological boundaries between what is worn on the body and the body itself.

 

Erwin Wurm

Paradise I (Idea of a High Heel Big), 2024
Steel, epoxy resin, styrofoam, acrylic
217 x 110 x 140 cm (85.43 x 43.30 x 55.11 in)
Unique

Erwin Wurm

Paradise II (Idea of a High Heel), 2024
Steel, epoxy resin, styrofoam
210 x 50 x 90 cm (82.67 x 19.68 x 35.43 in)
Unique

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The One Minute Sculptures embody Wurm’s innovative approach to time-based, participatory sculpture, which has been a central tenet of his practice since the earliest days of his career. Begun in 1996–97, they consist of written or drawn instructions performed by an individual for up to one minute.

 

Erwin Wurm

Be The Police (One Minute Sculptures), 2024
Bronze, acrylic paint, police cap 
115 x 116 x 82 cm (45.27 x 45.66 x 32.28 in) 

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In what Wurm describes as a ‘new chapter’ in the series, he introduces permanent, abstract sculptural elements to each work, which remain present even when the sculpture is not activated by a participant. Giving the works new life outside of the temporal duration of performance, this development demonstrates Wurm’s enduring impetus towards artistic evolution.

 

Erwin Wurm

Obey (One Minute Sculptures), 2024
Bronze, acrylic paint, broom, instruction drawing
164 x 53 x 30 cm (64.56 x 20.86 x 11.81 in) 

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I am interested in everyday life. All the materials surrounding me can be useful, and the objects and topics can be involved in contemporary society. My work speaks about the whole entity of a human being: the physical, the spiritual, the psychological, and the political. — Erwin Wurm

 

 

Erwin Wurm

Dreamer, 2024
Aluminium, paint
150 x 80 x 40 cm (59.05 x 31.49 x 15.74 in)
Edition of 3

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The Dreamers (2024) are a new series of work that addresses another aspect of the human condition beyond the corporeal: the psychological. Realistic human limbs support oversized white pillows above them in a playful reference to the unconscious. Seeking to ‘turn our reality upside down’, Wurm evokes the writing of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and his keystone text The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) through this absurd fusion of bodies and pillows.

 

Erwin Wurm

Dreamer, One Arm, 2024
Aluminium, paint
92 x 148 x 93 cm (36.22 x 58.26 x 36.61 in)
Edition of 3

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The Mind Bubbles (2024) give form to psychological thought through bodily associations. Abstract ovular forms are placed atop spindly, cartoonish legs in anthropomorphic imaginings of the thought bubbles found in comic strips. Wurm describes the works as ‘a symbol of an idea or a specific thought, which is not described.’ 

 

Erwin Wurm

Mind Bubble Walking Pink, 2024
Aluminium, paint
230 x 165 x 125 cm (90.55 x 64.96 x 49.21 in)
Edition of 3

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Building upon his earlier Hypnosis series in which potato-like forms have been given realistic human legs, the aluminium Mind Bubbles evoke conscious thought. They gesture to the cerebral aspect of the artist’s participatory works, in which he often asks individuals to reflect upon their own mental states or the theories of great philosophers as they perform a prescribed action.

 

Erwin Wurm

Mind Bubble Standing, 2024
Bronze, patina
190 x 100 x 50 cm (74.80 x 39.37 x 19.68 in)
Edition of 3

Erwin Wurm
Mind Bubble Standing Small, 2024
Bronze, patina
120 x 60 x 32 cm (47.24 x 23.62 x 12.59 in)
Edition of 5

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Learn more about the artist 

 

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