Erwin Wurm: “Gulp”
Ken Johnson
Erwin Wurm, the Austrian sculptor of funny transformations, has exhibited all over the world but has made little headway in New York. This entertaining show could make the difference.
A sculpture of globular forms held up by a human arm is titled “Me on LSD,” which tells you something about Mr. Wurm’s interest in altered states. Two works represent life-size figures that appear to have been swallowed, snakelike, by sweaters. In “Big Gulp Lying,” a person’s legs fill the garment’s arms and the feet emerge from its cuffs. The collar stretches into a vaginally suggestive opening between the legs. Physical reality, a philosopher might observe, provides awkward garments for the soul.
“Mr. Mutt” is a pedestal-scale piece named for the fictive signer of Duchamp’s found toilet fixture. The lower half of an extremely fat man on little legs and feet forms an interior bowl, which has drain holes in the center like those of a urinal.
Cantilevered out from one wall is a giant, realistic representation of a New York policeman’s cap. A small cartoon sketched on the wall invites viewers to stand under the hat to have their pictures taken.
In the delightfully deadpan, eight-minute video “Tell,” a young woman driving a car through the city has an absurd but philosophically intriguing conversation about the instability of reality with her slacker male companion. At the end she drives up the side of a building and parks the car. Neither seems to find this remarkable. It is better than the film “Inception” and makes a lot more sense.