Art Basel f... Documenta

Details

Erwin Wurm (B. 1954)
Art Basel f... Documenta
acrylic on resin
overall: 24 3/8 x 48¾ x 33½in. (62 x 124 x 85cm.)
Executed in 2006, this work is number four from an edition of six

Provenance

Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Literature

E. Wurm (et. al.), Cucumber, exh. cat., Munich, Lehnbachhaus, 2009-2010 (illustrated, p. 256).

Exhibited

Aachen, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, The Artist who swallowed the world, 2006-2007 (another from the edition exhibited, illustrated, p.262). This exhibition later travelled to Vienna, MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. All sold and unsold lots marked with a filled square in the catalogue that are not cleared from Christie’s by 5:00 pm on the day of the sale, and all sold and unsold lots not cleared from Christie’s by 5:00 pm on the fifth Friday following the sale, will be removed to the warehouse of ‘Cadogan Tate’. Please note that there will be no charge to purchasers who collect their lots within two weeks of this sale.

Lot Essay

‘Melting, for me, is the process of slowly transforming their form into something liquid. It’s this change of medium, the hard form of a building becoming fat, which means the dissolution of order. It becomes something not anthropomorphic, not abstract, but rather amorphic. And by melting, changing into something liquid, it totally loses form. If it’s still in the process of melting, it’s like ice cream. It’s liquid in a way, but it’s softer in consistency, like a pudding that is neither too firm nor too fluid. I’m actually very interested in potatoes because they are amorphic unforms. There are thousands of different potatoes, but they are all very easily and very quickly recognizable. And yet their forms are different’
(E. Wurm, quoted in an interview with P. Zuspan, ‘Erwin Wurm’ in Museo Magazine, https://www.museomagazine.com/ERWIN-WURM [accessed 4th August 2014]).

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