Erwin Wurm — Kunstverein in Hamburg / Villa Arson, Nice, 1993

Published in conjunction with exhibitions at Kunstverein in Hamburg and Villa Arson, Nice in 1993, this early catalogue documents works produced by Erwin Wurm between 1986 and 1992 — a formative period before the artist achieved broader international recognition. Appearing only a few years after his inclusion in Aperto at the Venice Biennale, the publication captures a practice still in development but already occupied with many of the concerns that would later define his career.

The photographs record an unusual sculptural vocabulary: sweaters stretched beyond utility, furniture modified by bodily pressure, clothing transformed into architecture, and simple actions translated into sculptural propositions. Bodies disappear into garments, objects absorb human presence, and sculpture begins to operate less as a fixed thing than as a temporary condition. Performance, photography, instruction, video, and object occupy the same territory.

What remains striking today is how unresolved these works feel in the best sense. They belong to a moment before the canonisation of the One Minute Sculptures, when Wurm was still testing the limits of what sculpture could be. Rather than illustrating a finished position, the catalogue records an artist constructing one.

Modest in scale and produced for two institutional exhibitions, the publication functions as a surviving document from an early chapter in contemporary European sculpture. Many of the works reproduced here would become touchstones within Wurm’s broader investigation of the body, absurdity, volume, and social behaviour.

Early Erwin Wurm catalogues from the late 1980s and early 1990s surface far less frequently than later museum publications and remain increasingly sought after by collectors interested in the artist’s formative years.

Shipping and handling included in the listed price.