ERWIN WURM
HYPNOSIS

26 JANUARY – 8 MARCH 2008
OPENING: SATURDAY, 26 JANUARY 2008, 7 PM

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is pleased to announce the presentation of the edition Hypnosis by Erwin Wurm. Hypnosis was developed exclusively for Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, and fifteen copies of it will appear. The exhibition will take place in the Department of Editions at the Salzburg gallery. It is the first exhibition of this internationally renowned Austrian artist at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Hypnosis is a sculpture cast in aluminium, the body of which resembles a potato. That potato-shaped body is given a high polish, whereas the legs are matt-finished. The artist regards Hypnosis as a type of thought balloon, but also as a result of his rather long preoccupation with archetypes or various mental conditions, especially hypnosis. In addition to the edition, a number of new works will be shown in the main building of the gallery.

For more than 25 years, Wurm has been dealing with the notion of sculpture and the possibilities of expanding it. Especially his One minute sculptures made him known worldwide. Here, the artist tells people what to do—e. g. stick their head into a refrigerator—and takes pictures of them. In doing so, Wurm shows that a sculpture might exist only for a few minutes and that everything can become a one, even the visitors to an exhibition who follow his instructions. Hence, Erwin Wurmʼs art blurs the borders between sculpture, performance, and action.

Erwin Wurm was born in 1954 in Bruck/Mur and has been living in Vienna for many years. His works are represented in numerous international collections, for instance those of the Fonds Régional dʼArt Contemporain, the Galleria dʼArte Moderna Bologna, the Walker Art Center, the MUMOK (Vienna), and the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt. The first large Wurm retrospective took place at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Vienna in 2007 and was then also shown at other European museums. At the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, the Wurm retrospective greatly contributed to the fact that the number of visitors climbed by twenty-five percent in 2007. Five hundred cultural experts and artists from Germany selected the top cultural highlights of the year 2007. The Erwin Wurm retrospective was rated secondbest, even outperforming Documenta 12.