The exhibition also includes four examples of Wurm’s more recent ‘flat sculptures,’ which he began in 2020. Wurm famously wanted to be a painter but was rerouted to a sculpture class instead. Just as his practice asks questions of sculpture—of time, surface, mass and volume—so too do these new works ask questions of painting, re-positioning the canvas as a flat sculptural work. Realised in oil and acrylic on canvas, the pieces appear initially abstract, featuring amorphous shapes punctuated by quantities of colour. Closer inspection reveals these to be interstices between inflated letters that together spell out the titles of the works, which in turn call to mind some of the items and processes present in Wurm’s work overall: Wurst, Weight, Melt. The letters comprising Wurst (2021) even look like the items they together describe, in a kind of visual onomatopoeia. As with all of the artist’s work, these pieces press at the limits of visual literacy, inviting fresh perspectives on everyday language and forms.

Erwin Wurm (b. 1954 in Bruck an der Mur, Austria) lives and works in Vienna and Limberg, Austria. Wurm studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts in Austria and has been exhibited extensively in private and public galleries around the world since. His work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Tate, London; Kunsthaus Zürich; Albertina, Vienna; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among many others. In 2023, he held his first museum solo show in the UK at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and in 2017 represented Austria alongside Brigitte Kowanz at the Venice Biennale. In September 2024, the Albertina Modern in Vienna will be holding a career survey in celebration of Wurm’s 70th birthday.