Erwin Wurm

Erwin Wurm

Erwin Wurm (born July 27, 1954 in Bruck an der Mur) is an Austrian artist.

Erwin Wurm’s artistic oeuvre ranges from sculptures to paintings and graphics, videos, actions, photos and books.

From 1974 to 1977 he studied art history and German language and literature at the University of Graz.

From 1977 to 1979 he was a student of art and art education (sculpture with Ruedi Arnold) at the Mozarteum University Salzburg, then known as the Mozarteum University of Music and Performing Arts in Salzburg, and from 1979 to 1982 he attended the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts

From 2002 to 2006 he taught as a professor at the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies/Art Education and from 2007 to 2010 for Sculpture/Sculpture and Multimedia at the Institute for Fine and Media Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

He became known to a wider public through his One Minute Sculptures, for which people pose with everyday objects in a surprising encounter, which Wurm then documents in photographs. These are often exhibition visitors who themselves become objects of aesthetic experience within the exhibition situation, thus thematizing the relationship between subject and object.

These One Minute Sculptures became popular through the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ video for their single Can’t Stop from 2003, in which Erwin Wurm is named as a source of inspiration. Wurm’s “Fat” sculptures, which show petty bourgeois status symbols such as cars or detached houses in a “fatty”, bloated state, are also well-known.

Numerous national and international museum exhibitions.

Erwin Wurm is one of the most successful contemporary artists.