Erwin Wurm *
(born in Bruck/Mur in 1954)
Obama, 2013, acrylic, paint, 35 x 12 x 12 cm, one from an edition of 5 (left foot restored)
Provenance:
Gallery Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg (confirmation photocopy)
Private Collection, Germany
You once complained that „many people misunderstand my work“.
“They think it’s about the body or this or that object, but no: I’m primarily concerned with circumstance.” How much does it bother you that many people see your art primarily as funny?
It annoys me when my works are perceived in a truncated way. I realise that my art has a low entry threshold. You walk into a museum, see a fat car and think to yourself: haha, that’s funny. Unfortunately, many people don’t go beyond this first impulse, and thus criticism in the form of humour is much more subversive than criticism delivered with a sledgehammer. Markus Gabriel wrote: “In our late capitalist democratic society, it is not tragedy but comedy that is the appropriate form of ideological criticism.” I agree with that.
“At work, I am an army commander with a sharp sword”
Why is that?
I’m melancholy, not depressed. But above all, I’m angry. The wall came down, everyone was talking about the end of history, about a world without conflict. And now? Donald Trump, Putin, Orbán, Erdogan, but also the Clintons...it’s all enough to make me cry....
Erwin Wurm (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Magazin, no. 46,
November 2016 from an interview)
