Erwin Wurm

The Austrian sculptor Erwin Wurm (born 1954 in Bruck an der Mur) queries our ideas on reality and identity. His engagement with sculptural questions such as a change in dimension and volume opens up surprising new ways of seeing the world. Anyone familiar with the artist knows that he understands better than any other how to test our perceptions—always with much humor and a fair amount of cynicism.

At Kunstraum Dornbirn, Erwin Wurm will take the visitors with him on a time journey to the Austria of the 1960s and 1970s. He intends to install the prototype of a classical, saddleback-roof family home in the historic exhibition hall. The “Narrow House” is a true-to-scale replica of his parents’ house in the Steiermark, but reduced in width to 1.3 meters. Visitors can wedge their way into the completely furnished interior and so experience the confinement and the distorted proportions for themselves. The single home as a symbol of privateness, but also of narrow-mindedness, is presented as a squeezed-together world. The use of ostensibly personal elements, such as furniture or photos, serve simply as metaphors for implementing Wurm’s ideas. The “Narrow House” cynically visualizes how architecture could develop in times of a growing scarcity of space.

Curator: Ingrid Adamer