Paradoxes of everyday life

A Self-portrait as a Pickle or his Fat Cars: Austrian artist Erwin Wurm (*1954) has made it his mission to draw people's attention to the paradoxical and absurd in life. His sculptures often refer to industrially produced consumer goods, which he satirically transforms into other forms, thus opening up new perspectives and expressing criticism of unreflected consumer behavior. Wurm's Fat Cars and Fat Houses show petty-bourgeois status symbols as inflated objects that are attributed a disproportionately high value. On July 27, 2024, the artist turned 70 years old – to mark the occasion, the ALBERTINA modern is opening the major solo exhibition Erwin Wurm. A 70^th-Birthday Retrospective. From September 13, 2024 to March 9, 2025, visitors can experience Wurm's famous and numerous lesser-known works of art.

After studying art at several universities in the 1970s and early 1980s, Wurm succeeded in making himself known to a wide audience at the end of the 1990s with his One Minute Sculptures: Exhibition visitors acted on instruction in a bizarre way with everyday objects, were photographed by Wurm and became part of the artwork. The artist himself still performs this performance in museum contexts. Wurm is considered one of the most influential contemporary artists and was, among other things, professor of sculpture and multimedia at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.