|
Erwin Wurm
gulp
4
November - 4 December 2010
Lehmann Maupin Gallery announces its
first exhibition with Erwin Wurm, entitled
gulp, on view 4 November – 4 December, 2010 at 540
West 26th Street. With wry wit and a formalist approach Erwin
Wurm uses simple materials and everyday objects in his
performances, photography, video, installations and large
freestanding sculptures, all presented in this inaugural
exhibition.
In
gulp Wurm introduces the theme of the social envelope
– clothing, food, furniture, cars, houses – in order to
annotate the fragility of both the individual and collective
identity behind it. Wurm uses these items as personifications
of a social context through which individuals attempt to
express themselves all the while being formed and deformed by
it. In works such as Telekinetischer Masturbator, a
sculpture of a man without arms, wearing a real shirt, and
Me Under LSD, a single extended hand supporting a
large cloud-like structure, Wurm translates psychological and
mental realities into physical realities. The layers in which
Wurm surrounds the body, both metaphorically and literally,
the extensive fattening-up or thinning-down of people and
things, are, like his softened architecture, sculptural
metaphors for an existential insecurity about the boundaries
of oneself. This idea is relayed in the Psychos
series, which shows the human body in various poses, hidden
under sweaters and pullovers. In sculptures such as Big
Coat, a series of works relating the human body to basic
geometric shapes, Wurm questions the relationship between
inner and outer and the dominance of the material world over
the subjective, which increasingly seems deprived of its free
will. Only through an anarchic deviance is momentary
individuality found, however, this requires abandonment of
one’s familiar social context.
The
viewer becomes an active participant in Wurm’s dialogue with
the paradoxes of contemporary society and the vocabulary of
sculpture. "I want to address serious matters, but in a light
way. I want to reach more than just an elite circle of
insiders,” the artist has said. “My work speaks about the
whole entity of a human being: the physical, the spiritual,
the psychological and the political." Using performance as a
starting point, Wurm’s sculpture gives physical form to the
intangible while also highlighting the delicate nature of
identity.
Erwin Wurm was born in 1954 in Bruck
an der Mur / Styria, Austria and lives and works in Vienna.
Known for his uniquely humorous approach to formalism, Wurm's
multi-disciplinary works have appeared in exhibitions
worldwide. The artist’s recent solo shows include Narrow Mist
at the Ullens Center of Contemporary Art, Beijing, China,
Liquid Reality, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany, Erwin Wurm,
Kunstbau / Lenbachhaus, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus,
Munich, Germany, The Artist Who Swallowed The World,
Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland, Das
lächerliche Leben eines ernsten Mannes, das ernste Leben eines
lächerlichen Mannes, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany,
Erwin Wurm - Hamlet, Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland, Erwin Wurm
at the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon in France, and Glue
Your Brain at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney,
Australia. Wurm’s work was included in the exhibitions The
Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today at the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010 and the Third Moscow
Biennial in 2009.
Works
by Wurm are included in prestigious collections throughout the
world at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Peggy Guggenheim
Collection, the Walker Art Center, Museum Ludwig, Kunstmuseum
St. Gallen, Musèe d`Art Contemporain de Lyon, and Centre
Pompidou, among others.
Image:
Erwin Wurm
gulp
Installation view
Lehmann
Maupin Gallery, 2010
LEHMANN MAUPIN
540 West
26th Street
New
York, NY 10001
T +1
212.255.2923
|
