Interviews, Issue 10

Erwin Wurm

What Is Sculpture?

Words RAMONA HEINLEIN

Photography JULIUS HIRTZBERGER

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.

Photography by Julius Hirtzberger for Plus Magazine.

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.

RH: I’ve noticed that these works keep reappearing in exhibitions. You’ve been making them since the 1990s, and yet they still don’t seem exhausted or historically closed. They feel strangely current.

MC: Yes, for me — and apparently for many others as well — these works and the questions they pose are still very much alive. They haven’t lost their urgency. Only recently, an entire room dedicated to the One Minute Sculptures opened at the Tate Modern. I still genuinely enjoy showing them.

RH: You repeatedly challenge the traditional idea of sculpture as something stable and permanent. Even your massive sculptures often look like temporary states, frozen moments, or tipping points rather than timeless monuments. How would you describe your relationship to sculpture?

EW: What really drives me are very basic sculptural questions: the move from two dimensions into three, issues of mass, surface, skin, and volume. And time is equally important, because you never experience a sculpture in a single glance. You have to walk around it, move your body, change your perspective. So duration automatically becomes part of it. Then the question arises whether, as a sculptor, you want to stretch time or compress it, slow it down or condense it. Those kinds of questions really interest me.

RH: On the occasion of the 61st Venice Biennale, you’ll present a solo exhibition at the Museo Fortuny. In the first half of the 20th century, the palazzo served as the studio and home of the Spanish fashion designer Mariano Fortuny.

EW: Calling him simply a fashion designer is actually too narrow. Yes, he designed clothes and fabrics — pleats and textiles — and dressed many European and American intellectuals. But he also worked for the theatre, engaged with architecture and sculpture, and in that palazzo, he created something like a Gesamtkunstwerk. The place is completely filled, almost overflowing with objects and materials, and of course, there’s also junk among them. For me, the challenge is to deal with that abundance without disappearing in it myself. On the ground floor, there will be a concentrated solo presentation of my work, and upstairs, my works will enter into a dialogue with the existing collection.

“What really drives me are very basic sculptural questions: the move from two dimensions into three, issues of mass, surface, skin, and volume. And time is equally important, because you never experience a sculpture in a single glance.”

Erwin Wurm

RH: You’re also showing the work Balzac (2023) in Venice. The figure seems almost swallowed by clothing. The sculpture is inspired by Auguste Rodin’s Monument to Balzac (1898), who also dealt extensively with the processual nature of sculpture. What fascinates you about Rodin?

EW: I like leaving traces or references, small paths that lead elsewhere. For example, I also did a work on Donatello and on Gilles Deleuze. With Balzac, I returned once again to very fundamental sculptural questions and to the story behind Rodin’s piece. Balzac was a rather corpulent little man, and Rodin almost despaired trying to model him realistically. It took years until he simply dipped a bathrobe in plaster and hung it over the body. In this way of working with clothing — that’s where our interests meet.

RH: You will also exhibit Polaroids of the One Minute Sculptures.

EW: Yes. I’ve always called my photographs sculptures. I began photographing the One Minute Sculptures simply to document them. Because they’re ephemeral, there’s always the risk that nothing remains, that everything dissolves. And as an artist, you can’t really exist if nothing remains. That’s why I started taking photographs. And I did that for quite a while. But then I decided to stop when the history of photography kept knocking on my door. I realized that it didn’t really interest me. I am a sculptor.

(Read the full interview from Issue 10)