In this episode of The Art Bystander Podcast, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar is joined by Erwin Wurm on the occasion of Mind Bubbles & More at Carling Dalenson in Stockholm, running from 22 September to 31 October 2026. One could easily say Erwin Wurm is one of the world's most recognized and respected artists today.
Born in Bruck an der Mur, Austria, in 1954, Wurm has spent more than four decades expanding what sculpture can be, finding material in clothing, furniture, cars, houses and the human body. He originally wanted to become a painter, but found himself placed in a sculpture department. His response was to keep testing the discipline until he could make it his own, eventually returning to painting through works he calls Flat Sculptures.
That resistance to a fixed definition runs through his practice. In the 1992 video 59 Positions, a man and his sweater move through a sequence of poses, making sculpture out of the changing relationship between a body and its clothes. His later One Minute Sculptures invite participants to follow instructions involving everyday objects, adopting positions that can be awkward, funny or difficult to maintain. A sculpture exists briefly through someone's willingness to take part, with balance, embarrassment and the presence of an audience becoming part of the work.
Wurm's distorted objects extend these questions into the things we buy and inhabit. In his Fat Car series, luxury vehicles acquire swollen bodies, exaggerating the excess already associated with them. Fat House turns domestic security into something ungainly and overgrown, while Narrow House compresses his childhood home into proportions that make moving through it uncomfortable. Possessions become a way of examining the expectations attached to success, respectability and belonging.
These works can also be understood against the background of Wurm's childhood in postwar Austria, where the recent Nazi past often remained unspoken and conformity shaped everyday life. The absurd gives him a way of approaching the habits people accept without much examination. Following an instruction, dressing correctly or choosing a particular car becomes material for thinking about how we learn to fit in.
There is a useful connection here with Pierre Bourdieu's account of taste and social distinction: the objects around us communicate class and aspiration, whether or not we intend them to. Wurm makes those objects physically strange enough for their social meanings to become harder to overlook. His humour can leave us wondering why we laughed, and how much of our own behaviour we recognise.
Mind Bubbles & More brings together three-dimensional sculptures and recent Flat Sculptures. The Mind Bubbles borrow the familiar thought-bubble form from comic books while withholding the words or images we expect to find inside. The viewer supplies an imagined thought, continuing Wurm's interest in participation through an encounter that takes place in the mind.
Across sculpture, performance, photography, video and painting, Wurm returns to questions of volume, identity and perception. Wurm’s work is held in major public collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Centre Pompidou, and Walker Art Center. He has received Austria’s Grand State Prize for Fine Arts (2013), the GNMH Award (2021), and an honorary doctorate from the University of Belgrade (2022). He is represented by Thaddaeus Ropac, Lehmann Maupin, and König Galerie.
An introduction to an artist whose work makes the everyday a subject of sustained scrutiny, from the clothes on our bodies to the instructions we follow and the homes we build around ourselves. And be ready for some laughter!