Independent, The (London), Dec 17, 2000 by SIMON GRANT

Visual Art: Pick of the galleries - Erwin Wurm Photographers'
Independent, The (London), Dec 17, 2000 by SIMON GRANT

A man has a marker pen stuck up each nostril, a pen in each ear, a film-roll capsule scrunched into each eye and a stapler between his teeth. A woman sitting on a wet pavement has French fries wedged between each toe on her left foot. A man balances precariously on an upturned brush. A bread roll holds open a door. Erwin Wurm's "One minute sculptures" might seem the stuff of the classroom prankster or the bored office worker, but you can't deny that these absurd artworks are fun.
Wurm, a Swiss artist in his mid-40s, uses the body as the focus for what are often balancing acts that last as long as he can bear it. When you are upside down with your head in a flowerpot, a minute is all you need.

We've trodden this path before - Charles Ray turned his body into a rag doll, pinned to the wall by a plank of wood. Piero Manzoni's Magic Base was a plinth onto which you could turn yourself into an instant sculpture. Richard Wentworth, who takes photographs of incidental urban situations, once said that a cigarette packet folded under a table leg was more monumental than a Moore sculpture - but Wurm's attitude is more domestic.
His sculptures/performances/photographs are not as throwaway as they seem. They work as little strategic acts of art terrorism, cocking a snook at the idea of sculpture as grand, monumental, serious and permanent. In their quiet way, they follow on from Duchamp's jokey ready-mades, but what saves them from idiocy is that inherent failure is part of the process. The pen will fall out. The bread roll will drop to the floor. The chips will go soggy. Artists have a tough time choosing their subject matter but Wurm's deceptively simple pieces find the right balance, saying big things with small, humorous gestures.

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