Erwin Wurm

"I Love My Time, I Don’t Like My Time: Recent Work by Erwin Wurm," the artist’s first major survey, is organized by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and will be housed in the museum’s Lois Foster Wing and Rose Building. Through experimentation in performance, photography, installation, drawing, video and text, the internationally renowned Wurm pushes the boundaries of sculpture by investigating elements of time, mass, and material form.

The exhibition includes Wurm’s early works such as "59 Positions" (1992) and a range of his "One-Minute Sculptures" (1997-present), as well as series like "Instructions for Idleness" (2001) and "How to be Politically Incorrect" (2002-2003). In addition to the photography, drawings, sculpture, and video work, at the center of the exhibit is the debut of "Fat House/I Love My Time, I Don’t Like My Time" (2003), the latest in Wurm’s series about mass that explores the wild and dark potential of sculpture and digital animation. "Fat House," a life-sized house made to look cartoonishly bloated, incorporates "I Love My Time, I Don't Like My Time," the animated video of another work about mass, "Fat Car." This combination of works blurs the line between comedy and darkness, and indicates recent, spectacular innovations in Wurm's artmaking.

Similar to his well-known "One-Minute Sculptures," there will also be instructional drawings on-hand, which will invite audience participation. By combining their bodies with a variety of common objects according to the artist’s instructional drawings, the audience becomes a vital component of the creation of these temporary sculptures. The humorous and poignant results of these interactions will be documented with Polaroid cameras provided by The Rose.

Wurm’s work is concerned with finding ways to extend the dialogue of the pioneering performance and conceptual art of the 1960s into formal works of sculpture. He has staged art pieces that walk the delicate line of performance art. While appearing purely comical on the surface, there are complex messages beneath these temporary sculptures that elevate them above the status of mere incident, form, and behavior. These sculptures provide satirical commentary on life and art. His piece "How to Be Politically Incorrect" is humorous yet addresses serious subject matter – his reactions to a post-9/11 world.

“This show represents a comprehensive survey that highlights more than 10 years of smart, beautiful, and humorous production by one of the world’s most unique artists,” Rose curator Raphaela Platow says.

Adds Michael Rush, the Henry and Lois Foster Director of The Rose, “Wurm continues the strong tradition of ironic and political performance work initiated by the widely influential Viennese Actionists of the 1960s.”

Wurm’s work has been the subject of sole exhibitions at museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice, Italy), and the Centre National de la Photographie (Paris). He graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts and Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1982 and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, in 1979.

Pressetext

Erwin Wurm
I Love My Time, I Don’t Like My Time