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FLORIDE / MIAMI BEACH : ERWIN WURM : BEAUTY BUSINESS
until Sunday March 04 2012
Bass Museum of art
T : +1 305.673.7530
2100 collins avenue (between 21st & 22nd)
33139 Miami Beach
United States
Curated by Peter Doroshenko, Beauty Business is Wurm’s first cohesive focus on the home or dwelling, defined as an in-between space where one may hesitate between worlds, here between body and house. In terms of content, this exhibition will present different works from the exhibition in Den Haag last summer. Both older and very new works will address the theme of the house in different relations.
Wurm, an artist living and working in Vienna, combines various art forms: sculpture, photography and performance into a unique personal view of the everyday world. Drawing on history, humor and philosophy, Wurm creates light-hearted artworks with at times serious messages. His new sculptural works which have a grand theatrical scale and were created specifically for this exhibition, invite the viewer to interact and participate. Wurm’s smaller-scale Drinking Sculpture series ask the audience to engage and they literally do; it is a bar. The viewer can open drawers and interact with the piece.
Beauty Business, is Wurm’s first cohesive focus on the home or dwelling. As architect Le Corbusier once remarked, the purpose of architecture is to move us. In his art, Wurm consistently realizes architecture’s highest aim as he creates works whose extraordinary power lies not only in how deeply they make us feel, but also in how they let us see the complexity of our feelings, in meaningful environments which help us to dwell. A dwelling is an in-between space where one may hesitate between worlds. The activity of dwelling is therefore a contemplative lingering – a way of remaining in a space or location that is responsive to the nature of that particular place, and open to whatever happens to trigger our imagination; through association, through fantasies, daydreams, desires, or memories.
This exhibition is produced in collaboration with Dallas Contemporary, Texas and curated by Peter Doroshenko, the Director of Dallas Contemporary. It will be presented at Dallas Contemporary and be on view April 14 through August 19, 2012.
Additional support for this exhibition was made possible by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris and Salzburg; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York.