Saturday, October 27, 2007

more cruising

Having spent an hour or two! looking around on the scarlet impernet I occasionally come across something that takes my eye, leads onto other things and sinks in to my lower depths of my mind - to be retrieved at some point and used as a reference or just sits there and scores on the intriguing/wow front. This is one of those occasions - cool sculptures, exploring more of the work through searching; apart from the instant visual humour, the concept being many of the works: are what attracts me to his work.

I am interested in the object, in liberating it from its field, giving it a new validity and meaning. It is integrated in a different system of values and ideas: in that of art. In this way it loses its function and takes on another. I do not want to go so far as to say that the object is no longer recognized. Rather I want to have the appeal of the recognition effect on the one hand and that of alienation on the other, which the object emanates. Source:Erwin Wurm interviewed by Desirée Schellerer, Design Vienna, (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, February 16-March 27, 1989)

You may recognise one or two pieces - they have been taken further and used in an advertising campain regarding a greener environment (sorry, didn't save link along the way)



Erwin Wurm, one of Austria's most important and internationally famous sculptors, has been preoccupied with expanding the concept of sculpture since the 1980s. Wurm is primarily a sculptor, and traditional sculptural concerns such as the relationship between object and pedestal, the function of gravity, the fixing of form, and the manipulation of volume, play through all his work.

1 comment:

jafabrit said...

I saw Wurm's exhibit at the Baltic last year and when I saw the truck it made me chuckle. It wa a great exhibit.