Erwin Wurm
Kiss (Abstract Sculptures)
Synthesa @ Lehmann Maupin, Chelsea, NY [link]
February 28 – April 19, 2014
Presented atop gallery-white pedestals, Erwin Wurm’s figurative objects stand wistfully erect. Wurm’s sculptures allude to a cheap liaison, formally reminiscent of a kitsch dolphins statuette, triumphantly erupting out of their simulated ocean. These cast-bronze “casings”, painted with matte, fleshy-like mauve acrylic, conduct dual associations in scale and metaphor: what are franks are served up as phalluses, what are deli meats perform as human limbs. Functioning like surrealist poetry where disparate objects and behaviors are incongruously aligned, the girth of the objects’ romance is implied by the degree of the “meat’s” actual entanglement.
photo courtesy of Lehmann Maupin Gallery