art and audience

Wurm, Erwin. Confessional, 2003. Installation view. Museum of Contemporary Art.

Wurm, Erwin. Idiot, 2003. Installation view. Museum of Contemporary Art.

Austrian artist Erwin Wurm creates fictional spaces and sculptural objects, by manipulating and directing the audience/person to become a part of the artwork.

In the work Confessional Wurm places a small wooden house with two large holes cut from its opposite walls in the middle of the gallery and invites spectators put their head inside the house. The spectator is then meant to expose something about himself or herself to the other person. Where as, works like Idiot 2003 use inscriptions and text to direct the audience through the creation and form of the work. In Idiot Wurm places an ordinary chair in the middle of the gallery floor and by a tiny directional drawing in the top left hand corner of the wooden backrest asks the viewer to help create his final piece.

Wurm, through simple instruction, creates new and intimate environments that are completely dependent on the audience’s inhabitation for their essence. These works rely strongly on the audience's response and reactions to the proposed 'model/plan' for them to become ‘total’, whereby the author becomes transparent as the audience begins to create the invented situations.

1.Wurm, Erwin. Confessional, 2003. Installation view. Reproduced from Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. http://www.mca.com.au/default.asp?page_id=10&content_id=1479

2. Wurm, Erwin. Idiot, 2003. Installation view. Reproduced from Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. http://www.mca.com.au/default.asp?page_id=10&content_id=1479