VIENNA.- With Erwin Wurm, the 21er Haus presents one of the most important protagonists of Austrian contemporary art. The internationally renowned artist will participate in several major exhibitions around the world throughout 2017 and, alongside Brigitte Kowanz, occupies the Austrian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. At the 21er Haus, he presents his series of Performative Sculptures.

For more than 35 years, Erwin Wurm has been exploring the basic conditions of sculpture in terms of mass, volume, weight, statics and proportion. He exaggerates these categories that are intrinsic to art and confronts them with our socio-political norms and values. ‘The radicalism of his venture to expand on conventional categorizations is reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp, who declared experimental, visual thinking as an artistic programme that enables new avenues for art to open up’, says Alfred Weidinger, co-curator of the exhibition.

Erwin Wurm redefines the social and temporal dimensions of sculpture with his One Minute Sculptures by turning action into sculpture. While the sculptor separates his own artistic authorship from the implementation of these pieces, these two elements are brought closely back together in his Performative Sculptures. In this series, Wurm gets his hands dirty, attacking models or raw blocks of clay and deforming them by either physical exertion alone or other external means. Afterwards, the artist often casts the abused models in either bronze, aluminium, iron, or polyester resin, and then paints them either in colour or with an applied patina. Tension arises in the dialogue between the original form of objects and the traces left by the performative interventions, which turn the body into the material and the medium of action.

In the early 1990s, Erwin Wurm began developing a completely new form of artistic expression with his Performative Sculptures. Since 2011, the artist has been working intensively on this series of works, which will be comprehensively presented at the 21er Haus for the first time. A majority of the 54 performative sculptures and statues have been developed especially for this exhibition.

In the House Attack series, the sculptor attacks models of buildings – some recognizable and some unknown, but all of which he has a personal connection to. For example, he lays himself on his parents' home and deforms it by his body weight, jumps to the Narrenturm (or Fool’s Tower, an old insane asylum in Vienna), digs a hole in the high-security Stammheim prison in Germany, or kicks at a German bunker. By abusing different types of buildings with an intent akin to corporal punishment, the act of destruction becomes a rebellion against adaptation and regulation. The point of departure for a further series, called Beat and Treat, is a raw, industrial block of clay that the artist uses to vent his furies. Two additional subgroups of Performative Sculptures are Furniture and Objects. In Furniture, Wurm focuses on pieces of furniture such as a sofa, an armchair, a recliner, a chest of drawers, or a refrigerator. In Objects, his focus ranges from things like a soap dispenser or a wall clock, to a mobile phone, a measuring tape, or a pistol.

With Performative Sculptures, the artist transfers outbursts of anger into sculptural creative processes. He thus exaggerates the principle of the sculptural gesture and makes a parody of it. ‘With this work, Erwin Wurm emotionalizes the work of sculpture, and at the same time psychologizes the perspective of the onlooker. The objects are examined via eyes upon traces and attempts are made to draw conclusions regarding the artist’s inner motivations, his abysses and the disposition that brought about each respective sculptural action’, according to cocurator Severin Dünser.

The Fat House was purchased for the Belvedere collection in 2016 and has been placed in front of the Upper Belvedere as a visible harbinger of the exhibition in residence at the 21er Haus. It engages in a playful dialogue there with the baroque architecture of the palace. This walk-in sculpture contains an animation of the overweight house speaking a monologue about the meaning of life, art, and architecture. Overall, the work presents an entertaining and ironic reflection on the symptoms of our prosperity and an invitation to ponder existential questions.

‘It is a pleasure for me to be able to present Erwin Wurm's newest series of works in a solo exhibition at the 21er Haus’, explains Stella Rollig, General Director of the Belvedere and 21er Haus.‘ Erwin Wurm is currently the most respected artist in Austria. While his presentation at the Venice Biennial has garnered him attention, our show will add another important aspect to Wurm’s reception.’