Fat House

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Fat House in the Austrian Sculpture Park in Styria

Fat House ( English for fat house ) is a sculpture by the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm . The accessible plastic house with a video projection inside is one of several fat sculptures by the artist that criticize consumer society and its petty-bourgeois status symbols in a humorous way. It is on permanent loan from the Belvedere in the Austrian Sculpture Park south of Graz and is one of Wurm's best-known works.

description

Erwin Wurm created the Fat House in 2003 in collaboration with the Krinzinger gallery in Vienna . It was created with a view to the “Art Unlimited” show at Art Basel and was first exhibited there in June 2004. The shape of the work of art is based on an ordinary suburban house , with a red tiled roof in saddle construction , a central entrance door and two side windows on the facade. However, the white walls curve outwards and give the house its swollen, "fat" appearance. The sculpture with the dimensions 5.4 m × 10 m × 7 m consists of polystyrene and a supporting frame made of iron and aluminum . For transport reasons, the plastic consists of 18 individual parts.

Video projection Am I a house?

Inside the walk-in house there is a screen onto which the content of a DVD is projected. The video with a duration of 8:40 minutes runs in a loop and shows the Fat House standing in the interior of Art Basel. At first you can see some exhibition visitors walking by, then the house entrance closes behind a guest and becomes a mouth. The two windows framed by the bulges of the facade become eyes and the work of art begins to speak with human facial expressions . In the following monologue , in English, it questions its aesthetics and function. This animated film with the voice of art and cultural historian Renée Gadsden was made in 2005 under the title Am I a house?

And why am I fat?
A house cannot be fat. I was told!
That's a fact!
a clear thing
no house can be fat.
But.
I am a house.

And why am I fat?
A house cannot be fat. I was told!
It is a fact!
a clear matter
no house can be bold.
But.
I am a house.

Exhibitions

In front of the Belvedere Palace, Vienna
Copy in Towada Art Center

The Fat House has enjoyed great popularity since its first exhibition at Art Basel in 2004 . In the following years it could be seen in various renowned art museums and galleries across Europe, including outdoor exhibition spaces such as the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp or the Waldfrieden sculpture park in Wuppertal . The Bass Museum in Miami showed the individual parts of the plastic in 2011 . Before the house moved to the Austrian Sculpture Park on permanent loan in 2018 , it was exhibited in front of the south facade of the Upper Belvedere in Vienna.

A replica including a carport with a fat car is in the Towada Art Center (十 和田 市 現代 美術館), which opened in 2008 in the Japanese prefecture of Aomori . Another example is in the possession of the West Collection in Philadelphia .

Exhibition locations (selection)

reception

View through the greasy front door to the outside

Erwin Wurm is known for playing with the expressive possibilities of sculpture . In 1992 he dealt with volume growth for the first time and had a man put on so many layers of clothing for the performance Fabio Getting Dressed that the contours of his body completely disappeared. After Wurm had made a name for himself internationally with the One Minute Sculptures , he returned to working on volume and created his first fat car in 2001 . With Fat House , the artist took this idea of deforming everyday objects to extremes. The connection between body and architecture is expressed above all in the uneven surface, which is reminiscent of human fat pads . According to the standard , the sculpture, which appears flabby and monstrous at the same time, appears as a “swelling, soft state of the domestic retreat”. By removing the protective function of the house and turning it into an obese - depressive sculpture, Wurm creates the impression that it is in need of protection itself.

In the form of a projection, Wurm brings the facade into the interior of the installation and underlines his own authorship in a humorous way when he is briefly captured by the camera as he walks past at the beginning of the film. In the monologue, which oscillates between depth and nonsense , the Fat House asks existential questions, such as whether it is a house or a work of art - because, as is well known, houses cannot be fat. The film scholar Gertrud Koch sees in Am I a house? a hybridization between animated film and sculpture, in which the tension between the artistic object and the subject (the viewer) comes to the fore. Right at the beginning of the film a man is "swallowed" and the house begins to speak. Instead of a picture, a model or an animated drawing, the artwork itself becomes a film object. Koch drew a comparison with Jacques Tati's futuristic house in the feature film Mon oncle (1958), which physiognomically also has an expressive face.

The motive of the house grabbed Erwin Wurm in the following years to increase and tying it again and again with the variability of the volume. Several Melting Houses were built between 2005 and 2016 , including deformed models of the Flatiron Building , the Guggenheim and the Wittgenstein House . The artist attracted a lot of attention in 2010 with Narrow House , a heavily reduced model of his parents' house in Graz. The houses in House Attack (2006 on the roof of the mumok ) look less plastic and Mr. Krause arrives home after the big break (2007).

The Austrian post dedicated to the Fat House in 2019 a special stamp in the series "Contemporary Art in Austria".

literature

Web links

Commons : Fat House  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Katrin Bachofen: Art Basel: The family reunion of the art world. In: Handelszeitung . June 16, 2004, accessed March 4, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Amy Frearson: Erwin Wurm's Fat House installed outside baroque palace in Vienna. In: Dezeen.com. August 8, 2017, accessed March 4, 2019 .
  3. ^ Erwin Wurm - Outdoor Sculptures. Erwin Wurm , accessed March 4, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b Laurin Merz: Erwin Wurm - The artist who swallows the world. Documentary, Switzerland / Austria / Germany 2012, 52 minutes.
  5. ↑ a b Anne-Kathrin Auel: The interior begins under the facade. In: IKUD series for art and design studies. 4/2011, Lit Verlag , Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-99879-8 , pp. 16-17.
  6. ↑ Am I a house ?, 2005. In: Erwin Wurm. DuMont , Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-8321-9241-9 , p. 111 (English).
  7. ↑ a b Erwin Wurm's “Fat House” moves to Styria. In: The Standard . April 26, 2018, accessed March 4, 2019 .
  8. ↑ a b Erwin Wurm - Fat House. In: Austria Forum . Retrieved March 4, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Erwin Wurm's fat house. In: Paradise-Mag.com. August 16, 2017. Retrieved March 4, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Uta Winterhager: Am I still a house? Erwin Wurm's “Fat House” in the Wuppertal sculpture park. In: Bauwelt . May 12, 2015, accessed March 4, 2019 .
  11. ^ Gertrud Koch : Indefatigable: Erwin Wurm's Videographies of Failure and Success. In: Erwin Wurm. DuMont , Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-8321-9241-9 , pp. 34-38 (English).
  12. ↑ Sabine Vogel: Schmal: Erwin Wurm distorts his parents' house. In: The press . October 19, 2010, accessed March 4, 2019 .

Coordinates: 46 ° 58 ′ 42 "  N , 15 ° 25 ′ 55"  E