Mari Katayama

Erwin Wurm, One Minute Sculptures  1997

This video with sound is shown on a monitor and lasts nearly forty-eight minutes. It is one of a large number of works, mainly photographs, in Tate’s collection that form part of Erwin Wurm’s series One Minute Sculptures (see Tate P14777–P14816 and Tate P82011–P82016). Wurm began his One Minute Sculptures in 1988, and has since been continuously contributing to the encyclopaedic series in myriad locations around the world. The individual photographs feature images of people – anonymous participants, performers, curators, artists and even the artist himself – engaging in unconventional and sometimes physically challenging interactions with everyday objects such as clothing, buckets, balls, doorframes, bicycles and perishable goods. The resulting compositions feature unusual contortions – held for a minute – and illogical still-lives that are both humorous and provocative. While the photograph is the enduring record of each composition, the work comprises the entirety of the performative process, which begins with Wurm delivering instructions, both written and pictorial, to the subject of the ‘sculpture’. The participant subsequently enacts the determined formation or action and maintains it for a period of sixty seconds, during which time the pose is photographed. In a complex work that explores interaction, activation and the temporal, Wurm employs the photographic medium as a means of cataloguing his ephemeral studies.