ERWIN WURM | FAT CAR, 2001-04

Art Concept, Paris

Art & Public, Geneva

Private collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above by the present owner in 2009)

Erwin Wurm, one of Austria’s most important and internationally renowned sculptors, has established himself as a purveyor of ironic and social commentary, creating sculptures which are a contemporary amalgam of absurdist humour and a parody of Western consumerist culture. Wurm typically takes a banal everyday object as the subject of his work and radicalises it through a form of visual distortion.

The present work takes as its subject the “Fat Car”, a car model which in this case has been purposefully disfigured, inflated and bent in its structure. The artist uses cars as status symbols for mass culture to deliver his more serious message: 'I will often use humour to seduce people [...] to get them to move closer, but it's never very nice when they look closer'.

Whilst being critical of Western society and lifestyle, Wurm’s criticism is playful since humour can help you see things in a lighter way.