ERWIN WURM
AWAY AT HOME
TEL AVIV MUSEUM OF ART, TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
4 APRIL – 14 OCTOBER 2023
AWAY AT HOME is a major solo exhibition of the work of Austrian artist Erwin
Wurm. The artist’s path to sculpture began in the 1990s, when he started
work on his ONE MINUTE SCULPTURES, a series that continues to this day. For
these works, the artist placed everyday objects – clothing, furniture, and
other household sundries – on pedestals and placed them in a gallery
setting. The “sculptures” include instructions that implore viewers to get on
said pedestals and perform an unscripted action with the object, for the
duration of a single minute. In so doing, the viewers effectively become the
actual sculptures for this brief moment, creating the conditions for a
dimension of time and change that is otherwise at odds with the material
statis of traditional notions of sculpture.
AWAY AT HOME includes new ONE MINUTE SCULPTURES created from local pieces of furniture, as well as abstract environments – a wall, a cylinder –
that allow viewers to hide and reveal parts of their bodies. In the garden
adjacent to the gallery, Wurm presents his massive NARROW HOUSE – a to
scale replica of the artist’s childhood home that has been compressed into a
1.1-meter width. The house is fully accessible and obstacle-free for viewing
from the outside, but the interior of the installation is not accessible due to
its constraining dimensions.
