ERWIN WURM
WALKING BAG

MARTINSPLATZ, BONN, GERMANY
PERMANENT INSTALLATION SINCE 2022

On Sunday 4 September 2022, Erwin Wurm’s WALKING BAG, 2019 will be unveiled at Martinsplatz in the center of the former West German capital city of Bonn. The public work was commissioned by the city council and features an enormous pair of cartoonish legs descending from a large handbag, all painted in a hue of reddish orange that reflects the busy street corner on which it is installed, bustling with pedestrian and street traffic. The scene is sure to garner attention for its witty reversal of agencies – the handbag having sprouted limbs so it can take itself out for a stroll.The Austrian artist has long been carrying the objects of consumer desire to humorous excess, shrinking and enlarging his childhood home, squishing automobiles into comfortable benches, and WALKING BAG follows in this vein, using public space as the primal scene of shopping fantasies. The formal distortions at play in Wurm’s sculpture reflect the madness and obsession associated with commodity culture, though without reproach or judgment. Instead, Wurm mimes his subjects, using the language of sculpture to imagine his objects just as they are, only more so. The results are self-consciously ludic, which are only amplified by the work’s inclusion in open space, for seemingly anyone to see and interact with.

© Images Daniel Biskup

FEATURED ARTIST

ERWIN WURM
Erwin Wurm (b. 1954 in Bruck an der Mur, Austria) lives and works in Vienna. His oeuvre comprises sculptures, photography, video, performance, and painting. His works often involve everyday objects such as cars, houses, clothing, luxury bags, and food products, with which he ironically comments on consumerism and capitalist mass production. Wurm gained widespread popularity in the 1990s with his “One Minute Sculptures”. Museum pedestals are displayed and left devoid of any work, so that the audience can take the place of the sculpture for one minute, according to the artist’s whimsical instructions. With this ironic yet radical gesture, Wu...
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