Erwin Wurm / Brigitte Kowanz / Manfred Wakolbinger

picture gallery of the presentation

and the picture gallery of the event at Leopldskron Palace

a film by Salzburger Nachrichten, 01.10.2011

On October 1, 2011, the 10th and final Salzburg Art Project was unveiled to the public. In a homage to the host country, three internationally-acclaimed artists from Austria were invited to participate: Brigitte Kowanz, Manfred Wakolbinger and Erwin Wurm. Adopting radically different artistic positions, the trio created autonomous works, which, however, in juxtaposition generate a mutual tension.

Based in Vienna, the artist Brigitte Kowanz (*1957) became known for her light installations which she executes in the form of spatial scenarios or as architectural "interventions". Since 1997 she has been engaged as professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In her project entitled "Beyond Recall", currently envisaged for the Salzburg Staatsbrücke (or State Bridge), she is planning to intervene in the structure's architecture judiciously and strikingly in equal measure. Over the bases of the four bridgeheads Kowanz is to erect semi-transparent mirror-faced cubes containing neon-lit lettering. "These illuminated characters between the mirrors are simultaneously space-forming elements and information carriers. The space created is without boundaries. Interior and exterior space coalesce. A simultaneity of space and time, lettering, image and sculpture is generated which can be experienced on a sensuous level", explains the artist.

The photographer and sculptor Manfred Wakolbinger (*1952) occupies space with his organically-curved objects, which appear as beings from another world. His large-format sculptures made of stainless steel are initially designed on the computer before being executed sculpturally. For the Salzburg Art Project Wakolbinger chose a site on the Rudolfskai, a quay between the old city wall and the River Salzach, which he conceives as a stage for his approximately 11-metre-long sculpture "Connection", which references the cultural self-identity of the city of Salzburg.

Erwin Wurm (*1954) is the master of biting, off-beat humour. With his hallmark wit and irony, the artist retraces social and civilizational developments and, in so doing, interrogates the conventional concept of sculpture. The essential point of reference in Wurm's oeuvre - as evidenced, for example, in his work "Gurken" (or cucumbers), which he is planning to install in the Furtwängler Park in Salzburg - is the human body, in all its multifaceted individuality. "The fascination of the diversity of forms, which by virtue of their uniqueness are inexhaustible, is compelling. Although individually different, each cucumber is still immediately identifiable as a cucumber and generically classifiable as such...analogous to man," explains Erwin Wurm. The cucumber as a banal and ubiquitous object presents an ironic image. Yet by scaling it up to the size of a human body and creating the impression that it is growing out of the tarmac, Wurm confers upon it an individuality and elevates it to the status of an art work. Having recently presented a self-portrait of himself in Salzburg's Museum of Modern Art as a "pickled cucumber", the artist leaves his work open to interpretation, hovering as it does between critical irony and playful teasing: for ultimately, don't we all feel in a bit of a pickle sometimes?