Life Beat Soft Melt Exhibition Catalogue
Exhibition catalogue of Erwin Wurm at the Ludwig Museum (Koblenz)
© 2025, Silvana Editoriale S.p.A.
Pagination: 144 pages
Publication date: 2025
Language: English and German
ISBN: 978 88 366 6291 3
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Life Beat Soft Melt, co-curated by Prof. Dr. Beate Reifenscheid and Jérôme Sans at the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz, this catalogue offers an in-depth exploration of the work of Erwin Wurm, a leading figure in contemporary sculpture whose practice has continually pushed the boundaries of the medium. Through a multifaceted approach combining sculpture, performance, drawing, painting, and watercolor, the book highlights an artistic vision in which sculpture extends to time, the body, space, and living beings.
Looking back at the iconic One Minute Sculptures, this catalogue also presents his more recent works, notably his series of paintings called Flat Sculptures. For this exhibition in Koblenz, the artist deploys site-specific wall paintings in which sculpture is conceived as a flat surface that dresses the space.
Life Beat Soft Melt can be read as a sensitive manifesto, in which the subversion of everyday life, plays on scale and distortion, as well as the absurd, become critical tools to question contemporary demands for performance, efficiency, and normalization. Altogether, it presents a body of work deeply rooted in lif; its fragility, its rhythm, and its capacity for transformation.