Erwin Wurm, HOT
SCAD Museum of Art
August 16th, 2023 - January 15th, 2024
Walk through the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Museum of Art (SCAD MoA), and you will meet some odd and unique pieces. Erwin Wurm captivates the attention almost immediately with his piece Shy (Bag Sculptures). Raven black and silky legs tower over you (well, at least it does me) as you walk upon the exhibition itself. Nothing other than a designer purse tops it like a hat, but perhaps it can be seen as the body of the person itself.
Is it an object with legs, or a human as a purse? Or perhaps a commentary on femininity and what it means to be subjected as purely an object, an icon that is never more than the designer bag, holding merely things and stuff, rather than a head with thoughts and ideas.The piece playfully lifts its left foot as if to begin its stride out of the gallery itself, surly as I could walk around myself so could this work. Always on the move, never stopping to look around and never having the time to be critical. Much too busy, much too fashionable!
My first thought was: how unique, how fun! How…odd? Truly Shy (Bag Sculptures) kept my attention from the start, and once I had gone through the entire gallery, I ended up back at this work. My mind wandered to the meaning or conception of the piece. The placement within the gallery of Shy (Bag Sculptures) as your first impression of the exhibition surly sets the tone for what is to come.
Pass by Shy (Bag Sculpture) and you find more intriguing pieces that complicates the relationship of objects and human bodies. Are objects extensions of ourselves as a part of us? Or are we being consumed? Fountain is another such piece that brings these thoughts to the forefront. However, not as playful as Shy (Bag Sculpture), Fountain brings about a somber, almost horrifying contemplation to the viewer. Alone in a corner, the dramatic lighting bounces off the folds of the skin-like pants, with two sets of feet popping from each single pant leg. Are there people trapped within? Are they struggling for escape? Perhaps the figures are fusing as one, two people trapped in a struggle for freedom? The longer you look, the more the folds seem to squirm and shift. An amphoras blob that is neither still nor moving. The question then is posed, are we truly separate from the objects we use daily? Or are we conjoined, doomed to forever be enslaved to the material world that is forced upon us?
This exhibition is unique but also interactive. One Minute Sculptures was by far the most popular pieces within the gallery, with the majority of the museum guests around me focusing their attention on these works. Including myself, everyone had to try them out. Which meant having to stand inside the black bucket WITH a bucket placed on your head. Untitled (Double Bucket) makes you feel isolated and on a stage simultaneously. To experience the piece as intended, you need to be within the work for one minute. But it can feel like an eternity of course, because others are watching you do this uncomfortable action. Intimately you are a part of an artwork, the object on display. This synergy makes the object/human relationship feel more connected to the audience, and brings the concepts explored by Erwin Wurm out in the open, swirling in the minds of those standing in the gallery space. Fountain was my favorite work in his exhibition, simply because I thought it was the most connecting and entertaining One Minute Sculpture museum guests can experience.
Many other photographs and sculptures fill the gallery space further than what I have described. But it is spacious, the photos are immense, and the pieces are provoking. The issues displayed are not only serious and prominent, but they are also fun and engaging within the gallery itself.
HOT by Erwin Wurm runs until January 15th, 2024. If you get the chance (and really you should take this chance), go by the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Museum of Art and take a look.
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