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Erwin Wurm

Dissolution

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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. 
8.5.2021—5.12.2021
MAK Geymüllerschlössel

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.

 
Erwin Wurm’s ceramic sculptures, reminiscent of abstract characters, mirror deconstructions, deformations, distortions, contortions, as well as dissolution and decline—though all the time the artist is playing with paradox. In these sculptural forms Wurm combines realism with abstraction. The multifaceted gestures of an imaginary role play are familiar to us; at the same time, the abstract, sculptural forms assume figurative, human traits.
 
 
The exhibition is accompanied by the catalog ERWIN WURM: Dissolution, edited by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Rainald Franz, and Bärbel Vischer. With contributions by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Rainald Franz, and Bärbel Vischer as well as an interview with the artist. German/English, 64 pages with numerous color illustrations. MAK, Vienna/arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart 2021. Available at the MAK Design Shop and online at MAKdesignshop.at for € 29.

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The sculptural body segments invade the Geymüllerschlössel’s interior, creating tableaux vivants—dramaturgical arrangements located between movement and stasis, history and the present—in individual rooms and salons: the entrance hall, the library, the music room, the cupola room, the bedroom, the oriental room, and before a wallpaper panorama reflecting the weltanschauung of European colonialism.
 
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

Logo Dorotheum                             

Thanks to Thaddaeus Ropac
London, Paris, Salzburg
 
LOCATION
MAK Branch Geymüllerschlössel
Pötzleinsdorfer Straße 102, 1180 Vienna
Opening hours: Saturday & Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m. 
 
OPENING HOURS 2021
8 May until 5 December 2021
Saturday & Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
 
ADMISSION
€ 6
Free admission for children and teens under 19
Free admission with MAK Annual Ticket
 

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