Erwin Wurm What is sculpture?
By Ramona Heinlein
In Erwin Wurm’s work, nothing feels entirely fixed. Forms seem caught between solidity and dissolution, as if sculpture were less an object than a temporary agreement between matter, gravity, and time. What first registers as lightness gradually unfolds into something more searching: an invitation to question how we assign meaning and permanence. For decades, Wurm has approached sculpture as an open field where everyday materials and gestures shift roles and suggest new ways of seeing. His practice resists closure, favouring transition over resolution, possibility over certainty. Wurm shares his thoughts about duration and deformation, authorship and disappearance, and sculpture as something that happens rather than simply stands.
RAMONA HEINLEIN Your works are very often described as humorous. Do you actually understand humor as a deliberate strategy within your practice, or do you feel that this description is, at least in part, a misunderstanding? Because, as funny or comical as your works may appear at first glance, themes such as transience, invisibility, and disappearance clearly play an equally important role. This becomes especially visible, for example, in the One Minute Sculptures, where you invite exhibition visitors, through short and very precise instructions, to interact with everyday objects and to hold a pose for one full minute.
ERWIN WURM There is always a certain horizon of experience from which we perceive things. What some people experience as funny or playful may feel oppressive or even uncomfortable to others. So perception really depends on where you’re coming from. But no, it’s not about trying to be funny. I’m not a joke-maker. What interests me is rather the possibility of dealing with things lightly. In the 1960s and 1970s, many artists worked with a great deal of pathos. For me, that kind of pathos tends to make the viewer feel small. And I believe that art should do the opposite — it should elevate the viewer, open something up, not press them down. Of course, the One Minute Sculptures are formally quite close to slapstick. That’s precisely why I very consciously decided to show them only in museums and institutional spaces, and not at parties, clubs, or commercial contexts.
