The Erwin Wurm exhibition, Misconceivable, immediately brings smiles to people’s faces. Employing humour and wit, Wurm turns the world on its head, questioning our conventional understanding of objects and concepts. The concocted word serving as its title, right away places the exhibition somewhere between understanding and misunderstanding. Erwin Wurm has his own unprecedented way of working with sculpture. His self-portrait, for example, consists of 30 pickled gherkins on 30 pedestals. Besides the fact that the sight of the many gherkins is incomparable, the artist succeeds, at an ironic distance, in exposing male self-image and bringing it under discussion. A similar strategy is at work in a Renault bent out of shape – amusingly, but helplessly deprived of its function.
To Erwin Wurm, sculpture is a medium that allows him to work with volume, mass and form, and in this way discuss current issues such as cultural values, social norms, politics and identity. Many of his works take familiar things such as buildings, design, cars and fashion as their point of departure. When he twists and turns, expands or shrinks well-known objects, he is at the same time turning the identity of modern man upside down.
This will be the first exhibition in Denmark of works by the internationally acclaimed Erwin Wurm (born 1954). His radically different way of working with sculpture has opened doors to exhibition venues worldwide, and he is represented at several of the most prestigious museums. The Misconceivable exhibition shows early as well as recent works.
