ERWIN WURM

Gestural ceramic sculptures are the focus of the MAK exhibition, presenting Erwin Wurm’s sculptural series Dissolution (2018–2020) in a museum context for the first time. Performative gestures determine these anthropomorphic sculptures, whose forms oscillate between the ephemeral and the physical. The sculptures affirm the inherent plasticity of clay as material, recalling the potency of bozzetti, preliminary sketch-like models in which artists from the Renaissance onwards gave direct expression to their innermost creative ideas. With Dissolution, Wurm sets out in search of a creative process that cannot be completely controlled. The word “dissolution” has connotations of disintegration, decay, decomposition, and vanishing boundaries. The sculptures—with their protruding fingers, hands, lips, mouths, breasts, bellies, navels, noses, and ears—force their way out of a mass of clay.

In the garden of the Schlössel, Erwin Wurm’s sculptures of Carrara marble connect up with the artist’s role in critically illuminating and distorting our world.

Curator: Bärbel Vischer 

Kindly supported by

                             

Thanks to Thaddaeus Ropac

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