From June 13 until September 14 Zuzeum Art Centre is very pleased to present Austrian sculptor Erwin Wurm’s first solo show in Latvia. Erwin Wurm (b. 1954) is considered one of the most influential European sculptors of the last few decades. How It Is collects his works from different periods, presenting a unique perspective on the artist’s singular mix of figuration, philosophy, and the absurd. Armed with a motto of “everything is connected to everything else”, Erwin Wurm thinks of the human body as a malleable, open-ended connector between the organic and the human-made, the perks of consumer culture and the stalemates of conspicuous consumption.
The title of the show is lifted from Irish playwright and Nobel laureate Samuel Becket’s 1962 novel. The eponymous sculpture (2024), one of the more complex pieces the artist has made, belongs to the series of One Minute Sculptures that Wurm has started in late 1990s. This series offers the audience the possibility to transform themselves into a living sculpture by following the artist’s specific instructions and performing simple exercises with everyday objects. A selection of One Minute Sculptures is complemented by several photographs under the title of One Minute Photographs, showing the sculptures in the state of activation.
Erwin Wurm lives and works in Vienna and Limberg, Austria. He has twice participated in the Venice Biennale, representing Austria in 2017. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions around the world, including Vancouver Art Gallery (2019), Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2020), Suwon Museum of Art (2022), Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2023), SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2023–24), Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2023–24), Albertina Modern (2024–2025), and Towada Art Center, Japan (2025), as well as Marmorschlössl, Bad Ischl (2025), among many others.