DUISBURG.- The Lehmbruck museum in Duisburg, presents works from the Erwin Wurm's "Abstract Sculptures” series. Wurm follows Tino Sehgal, who presented his work “Kiss” as part of “Sculpture 21st”, and Monika Sosnowska.

For the first time, Erwin Wurm presents the latest works from his “Abstract Sculptures” series in Germany. His most recent group of works displays Wurm’s well-known sense of humour: Wurm’s sculptures make us smile even as they deliver subversive commentaries on the consumer society and contemporary sculpture. At the same time, Wurm re-interprets the aesthetic principle of abstraction, the hallmark of the modern age, by creating sculptures that are both abstract and representational. For more than three decades, Erwin Wurm has worked to expand the idea of sculpture. In his well-known series “One Minute Sculpture”, he distributes bizarre instructions to the participants whom he then photographs. He is also widely known for his so-called “Fat Sculptures”, blown-up middle-class status symbols like cars and houses.

Born in Bruck an der Mur, Austria in 1954, Erwin Wurm is one of the most successful contemporary artists of his generation. For more than two decades he has been scrutinizing our traditional concept of sculpture from different angles. From his early minimalist clothing sculptures (which he began producing in the late 1980s) and the immaterial/ephemeral One Minute Sculptures to the grotesquely distorted or bloated objects such as Fat Car (2000/2001) or Fat House (2003), Wurm has consistently concentrated on expanding our conception of what a sculpture can be when it is no longer cast in bronze or chiselled in marble. His oeuvre is represented in such world-renowned collections as that of the Guggenheim Museum in New York or the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and in the past years has moreover been featured in major solo exhibitions all over the world.

Numerous group and especially solo exhibitions at international museums such as Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Kunsthalle Wien, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Malaga, Spain, show that the Austrian-born artist has long conquered the international art world. In 2013, he was also honoured with the Grand Austrian State Prize, the highest distinction awarded by the Republic of Austria.