ERWIN WURM
HOUSE ATTACK
MUMOK, MUSEUM MODERNER KUNST STIFTUNG LUDWIG WIEN, VIENNA, AUSTRIA20 OCTOBER 2006 – 11 FEBRUARY 2007
In a permanent exchange of questions and answers about what sculpture is and how it is constituted, Erwin Wurm has worked from the outset on a many-layered body of work that can be understood as a long-term study of sculpture as a concept. For Wurm, one of the most successful contemporary artists, anything can become sculpture: actions, written or drawn instructions, or even a thought. His art often treats elementary as well as banal life needs and actions, as well as their perversion, as can be expressed in physical deformations. The artist explores issues such as the thinness craze and obesity, fashion, advertising, and the cult of consumerism, whose central fetishes include the private home as well the car. The exhibition showed more than 400 drawings, videos, photographs, and sculptures, the most expansive show of the artist's work to date.
HOUSE ATTACK, 2006Mixed media
5 x 10 x 7 m
His most prominent work, visible from afar, was the object HOUSE ATTACK, installed on MUMOK's external façade: the single-family house as a symbol of every day, privacy, as well as small-mindedness explodes like a bomb into the façade of the museum – the institutionalized museum temple. In its visual presence, HOUSE ATTACK represents an ambivalent metaphoric example of the work of the artist, a focus of the exhibition.
© Images Lisa Rastl