Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine 01-JAN-02

Erwin Wurm: the art of doubting. 01-JAN-02 Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine

Description of article

Erwin Wurm's early work, influenced by minimal and conceptual art, was relatively incorporeal, or in any event unbounded by the body. Gradually, almost inexorably, the human figure began to appear in it. The human form and the body were first evoked in the work by empty clothing, then concealed beneath clothing and deployed as unstable material, before becoming visible to the point of constituting one of the essential motifs in the work today. Wurm has frequently used his own body in his work: one of his most recent series of photographs is composed only of self-portraits. Is the body still seen as sculptural material, or has it taken on affect and psychological depth that had previously been denied it? Has the artist deliberately distanced himself from minimalist radicalism in order to render something of himself and his own personality? Or is he, on the contrary, playing with the representational codes of the "self" in order to demonstrate that the self is strictly an imaginary construct? Representing Absence Erwin Wurm produced his first "dust sculptures" in the late 1980s. These works were generally untitled, and gave only a minimal sense of the object's shape. The object had evidently been placed briefly on a plane surface and then withdrawn; along with the impression it left, the rest of the surface had been covered with a layer of dust. The viewer perceived the object only to the extent that it was no longer present; it was through its environment (the dust, as it were) that it was projected onto our imagination. Resting within glass boxes, as if to protect them, or exposed to the air on pedestals, on mere planks of wood, on the floor, or even in the street, these works could be seen, in some cases, as a critique of institutional artistic codes. But the artist saw them above all as the expression of a broader definition of sculpture, as playing with the difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional work, or even as the representation of an object by its very absence, through the refusal of objectivism and permanence. In 1993 Wurm produced a book, Size L to XXL (Within Eight Days), which purports to be a guide for gaining weight and, as its title indicates, for quickly passing from a size L to a size XXL. Despite the funny instructions ("70 degree temperature"; "go to bed late"; "slow and regular movements"; "read or watch TV in a reclining position") the work is a quite serious book sculpture. It was exhibited in a very sober manner, on a table, in the style of the sort of instruction book produced by conceptual artists. Here the structure exists only potentially and secondarily; the form and the material trace of the process matter less than the concept. "The book is not a sculpture which is simply there," Wurm remarks, "but it is the reading, the process behind it, which constitutes the sculpture."(1) The video 59 Positions (1992) presents a series of shots showing bizarre forms that we gradually realise are human bodies, twisted and tangled in their completely non-functional clothing: legs are clothed in shirt sleeves, stockings are used as tops, etc. We never see a bit of flesh: the body is used only for its ability to contort itself and to create unattributable shapes and temporary sculptures. In the video Face (A Thousand Portraits) human faces file past every five seconds. We have barely sensed the individuality of a face,...