E. Wurm – English

SCULPTURE ACCORDING TO ERWIN WURM

If humour can be defined as something that can question the established and reflect the evident absurdity of our reality, something capable of changing the hyperseriousness of our attitudes, that allows us to reach the genuine maturity of reasoning, then there is no denying the sense of humour that, intelligently set out, characterises Austrian artist Erwin Wurm’s work.

The art Wurm (Bruck/Mur,1954) has created has often been called conceptual, linking it to different alternative languages, perhaps given the variety of resources the artist uses (video, photography, actionism), and the peculiarity of some of the materials he resorts to (from pens and jerkins to second-hand clothes). Nevertheless, as in-depth analysis of his work reveals an oeuvre that is eminently dedicated to sculpture –mainly- and is defined by a series of ever-present “categories”, which are not set out in isolation, but in combination, almost like a cause-effect-cause network.

The dialectics between vacuum and matter, the intrinsic possibilities of the materials, the dialogue between sculpture and non-sculptural object, the body as a support and the idea of transformation. These sculptural “categories” almost always appear in Erwin Wurm’s varied oeuvre, although the purpose of his approach is to take them to the limit of their meaning and question the actual –perhaps the most essential?- “category” that defines sculpture as a classical artistic language: its own durability.

Since the late eighties, Wurm has produced works using the traces of dust left by the outline of objects that once stood in now-empty spaces. The intangible takes shape, revealing the existence of objects via their absence. Thus, the dialectics between presence and absence- tallies with the intrinsic possibilities of a material that can hardly be classed as “sculptural”, i.e. specks of dust. Furthermore, said material stimulates many associations and mental processes. Dust, like the ash that remains after a fire, represents something that was before and, although we associate it with dirt, we also connect it to something living. Conversely, we associate aseptic cleanliness with the extinct, with lifeless things.

Wurm uses a very interesting element in this series of works: the glass cabinet –which refers to the established role played by artistic institutions-, as something that protects the object but also that determines what is worthy of viewing and, finally, what is, or what is not, art. This is all set out employing a gesture that is a transgressor as it is loaded with irony: to represent absence itself.

One of Erwin Wurm’s most famous series is Gegenstände (1998-2004): garments with the details that obviously characterise the as such –buttonholes, lapels, pockets- no longer presenting their normal texture, soft and foldable, but transformed into hard, rigid objects. The artist absolutely and stunningly changes the perception we would have of those same garments if their materially were “normal”. The familiarity given its proximity strange, inappropriate, removed from our environment, and this, as well as causing certain unease, leads our lips to inevitably twitch into a smile on viewing this extravagance.

That loss of the role played by garments that no longer dress the human body but create other forms, other bodies even, is what is somehow chronicled in the video 59 Positions (1992), in which Wurm continues to explore the sculptural constant features that define his work. Alongside the peculiar employment of non-sculptural material, i. e. clothes, the idea of transformation also appears, since this proposal is base on the process itself. The video shows anthropomorphic shapes that hide bodies crouching or laying on the floor, wearing tight clothes that limit their movements but also allow them to move into the different positions. There is something likeable about this kind of living sculptures, that contrasts with the grotesqueness of their contortions and movements.

These works can be linked to the series of photographs that present the same person in a “normal” state and fattened-transformed by putting layers of clothes on, one on top of the other (such a Me, Me, Fat 1993). Likewise, the video Face (a Thousand Portraits), 1993-1994, depicts a face that changes its expression every few seconds, losing all traces of its own, identifiable personality. These works all coincide in the use of the human body, yet they never aim to undertake a psych, yet they never aim to undertake a psychoanalytical introspection, as could seem at first. In Wurm’s oeuvre, the body is a medium, perhaps the most accessible expressive tool, but it is also, above all, a support that represents the condition of what is perishable and transitory. These two concepts are essential to understand his works. (Moreover, just a s he “fattens” people, Wurm also fattens objects: houses or cars that appear bloated, bursting out of the seams of their own outlines, as occurs in Fat Car, 2001-2004, or in Little Big House, 2003).

The pieces called One Minute Sculptures, that Erwin Wurm has been creating since the late nineties, are some of his most celebrated works. Theses “sculptures” last a minute, played by the audience or by the artist himself, using elements and in positions as singular as they are comical: standing up with pens between their toes, acting as a bookcase holdind loads of books in each hand and between their legs, or balancing a plastic cube on their heads. These temporary sculptures have also been recorder in photographs where the objects and furniture are the centre of attention: a chair balancing incomprehensibly on some carrots, a shoe balancing impossibly on what looks like a broom or the virtually obscene image of a banana between the doors of a wardrobe, that stand ajar. Theses sculptures are based, as proposed in the title, on the idea of the ephemeral and essentially alter the codes that define sculpture (durability, heritage, collective memory…) a series of concepts linked to the traditional notion of sculpture). This should be considered alongside the, eminently contemporary, idea of immateriality, as revealed in the works in which the artist simply lists the precise instructions, with written or drawn indications, required to create the piece (Take off One Shoe and Listen to It for a While [2004], Take the Rubber Band and Play the Finnish National Hymn [2002] or Throw Yourself Away [2004]). Another example appears in the book From Men’s size L to size XL, including indications on how to increase one clothing size in eight days –once again the “fatness transformation” obsession. In the latter case, the work is not the object-book but the indications it contains (“Sleep late”, “Slow movements”, “Watch TV lying down”, etc.), which show the reader how to perform the “sculptural” process, i. e. its mental, conceptual, realisation. Consequently, Wurm takes a step further towards dematerialisation, he goes beyond the physical specificity of the objects, taking a limber jump off their heaviness and substantiality, like the “leggerezza” Italo Calvino referred to in his famous memos for the literature of this millennium, trying to take a weight of the structure of the story.

Finally, we must note one of the most interesting contributions of Erwin Wurm’s recent work, where the artist, surpassing the strictly “sculptural” premises defined to date, questions other issues that influence plastic creation: the actual idea of art or of the artist. We are referring to the series Instructions for Idleness (2001), created using photographs in which the artist portrays himself, in different attitudes and settings. Once again, Wurm, from an ironic, humorous standpoint, infringes the precepts established regarding conventional concepts and reveals the “constructed” discourse, fruit of a whole series of beliefs and values, regarding the notion of the artist and his personality. Wurm tackles the cliché of the artist as a solitary being given his status as creator, with a maniac, contemplative, nostalgic personality, with a temperament typical of Saturn –the old tradition put it-, that embodied a whole cliché, a “mental construction” that has lasted, in a way, until our times. In this series, the image of the artist looking out into the void, oblivious to reality and tangled up in his own thoughts (the inspired, impassioned artist?), sleeping in a corner during work hours, or smoking a joint before breakfast, are accompanied by titles as illustrative as: Fantasize about nihilism, Stay in your pyjamas all day or Be indifferent about everything.

This is the genuine contemporary dimension that defines Wurm’s work: his oeuvre manages to transmute the fundamental pre-established notions that define both the sculptural language (questioning concepts linked to this language, like durability or materiality) and the actual idea of art or creation (traditionally associated to madness, genius and inspiration). The truth is Wurm manages to carry out something quite difficult: to tackle those issues continuously from authentic irony, from playfulness and with a sense of humour.

Someone once said that humour is an affirmation of the human being’s superiority over the other creatures that inhabit the planet. The truth is that humour is one of the most intelligent therapies, that makes us immune to the predictable weight of commonplaceness, alerting us on how we take reality too seriously. A sense of humour always allows us to think like Malraux. “Tout peut toujours être pire” [Everything could always be worse].

Translation: Laura F. Farhall

(Lápiz n° 215, July 2005)