Erwin Wurm’s Mind-Morphing Matter at Lehmann Maupin Seoul

Erwin Wurm b. 1954, Austria Follow +

Erwin Wurm‘s wacky sculptures take over Lehmann Maupin Seoul for the Austrian artist’s exhibition Dream (11 May–24 June 2023). Among them are long-legged handbags, bronze sausages, and a jumper-wearing chair.

The exhibition features new and recent work, including paintings from Wurm’s ‘Flat Sculptures’ series. In Much (Flat Sculptures) and Mold (Flat Sculptures) (both 2021), the artist’s signature bubblegum pink saturates balloon-like forms that appear to inflate off the canvas.

Once-identifiable words now exist as flattened abstracts. Words such as ‘much’ and ‘mold’ morph into vast, vivid forms sitting plumply atop similarly vivid backgrounds, where moments of heavy brushwork bound across the canvas.

Wurm first made his ‘Flat Sculptures’ in 2021 to experiment with sculpture’s formal qualities. His series challenges the medium by experimenting with volume, mass, surface, and colour in an extreme way.

The sculptures Hurry Along (Bag Sculptures) (2023) and Eames (2022) are whimsical and strange. Both bring inanimate objects to life, toying with our sense of recognisable forms and tendency to anthropomorphise. —[O]

Main image: Erwin Wurm, Hurry Along (Bag Sculptures) (2023). Aluminium, paint. 182 x 56 x 192 cm. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York/Hong Kong/Seoul/London.