With the solo exhibition >PRIVATE WURM< open 20/10/2010 – 30/01/2011, the Essl Museum presents very recent works by the internationally renownend Austrian artist Erwin Wurm. In the works on show, Wurm takes an ironic and distanced look at changes in the perception of reality and identity triggered by the media.

A full-size house (16m long, 7m high), albeit compressed to a width of only about one metre, exemplifies the distortion to which images are subject. The house is modeled on the artist’s childhood home. Visitors will be able actually to enter the house and its individual rooms to feel the impact of its narrow confines. The dimensions of the furniture such as chairs, tables, plates and cutlery have been squeezed to the same extent as the house itself. The discrepancy between reality as it was and as we remember it, between the body and the world outside, becomes blatantly obvious.

This idea of distorted perception was also at the root of the over-size policeman’s cap, which was specifically created for the exhibition and will be shown together with other recent artwork. The visitors will have the opportunity to ‘take shelter’ under the cap with its diameter of more than one metre.

Erwin Wurm’s creations demonstrate how much the world as shown by the media lastingly changes our way of thinking, living and creating. Reality is continuously adapted to the way it is presented in the media. Visions of the future, films, science fiction and cartoons play an important role in the artist’s work.

Image: Narrow House, 2010 © Studio Erwin Wurm Photo: Mischa Nawrata

Essl Museum
An der Donau-Au 1
3400 Klosterneuburg/Vienna
AUSTRIA
T: +43-(0)2243-370 50 150
F: +43-(0)2243-370 50 22
E: info@essl.museum

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