Opening reception with artist: May 14, 6–8 PM
Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present Double Dream, an exhibition of new and recent work by Erwin Wurm. Over the last four decades, the Austrian artist’s dynamic sculptural practice has explored the absurdity and paradoxes inherent in post-modern life. While his oeuvre is filled with larger-than-life-size pickles, anthropomorphic sausages, empty suits, and impossibly proportioned houses, Wurm is best known for his iconic One Minute Sculptures, which provide instructions for participants to create temporary sculptures by performing illogical poses with everyday objects. Through his paradoxical work, Wurm confronts philosophical questions about contemporary society—from obsessions with status and consumerism, to anxieties around traditional value systems, to the complexities of modern psychology. At the same time, the artist explores new possibilities for sculpture through ambitious formal experiments with volume, surface, scale, and duration. Double Dream marks Wurm’s first solo presentation in New York in five years and runs alongside his solo exhibition at Museo Fortuny, Venice, which opens concurrent with the Venice Biennale on May 5th. A public reception for Double Dream will be held on May 14 from 6–8 PM, with the artist in attendance.
Double Dream debuts two new sculptures from Wurm’s Dreamer series. Both works, Nurse and Double Dreamer (2026), feature figures whose entire upper bodies have been replaced by massive pillows, squashed as if pulled off an unmade bed. The absence of identifying features gives these pieces a sense of both anonymity and universality, yet despite lacking faces, arms, and torsos the sculptures still manage to express their distinct personalities. In Double Dreamer, two pillows are stacked on top of a pair of legs that hug tightly together, suggesting shyness, unease, or reticence, while in Nurse, the figure stands with legs apart, confidently bearing the weight of an oversized cushion. In both works the sculpture’s head is subsumed within a large pillow. Without the ability to see clearly, the figures find their perception clouded and they become lost in their own thoughts, dreams, and illusions.
The exhibition also features a number of new and recent Substitutes, ranging from the petite to the towering. In this series Wurm continues his decades-long exploration of clothing as a sculptural medium, and in these works he absents the body entirely, leaving empty garments cast in aluminum or bronze. In Double Dream, Substitutes fill the largest gallery, creating a field of brightly colored figures seemingly suspended mid-motion. Again, even without heads, faces, or hands, Wurm successfully conveys the personalities and moods of his figures through shrewd choices in posture, scale, and color. In the smallest work, Waiting Pink Small (2024), a diminutive pink suit stands with its arms by its sides, one foot slightly in front of the other to reveal flattened dress socks. The figure’s stance suggests a body in pause, and the sculpture appears to be waiting patiently for something intangible.
Double Dream showcases the breadth of Wurm’s experiments with the figure—at turns present, absent, supplanted, or distorted. Where the artist’s Dreamers visualize psychological weight, his Substitutes examine how clothing can function as a stand-in for the individual. Here, clothing is revealed as an icon, symbol, signifier, or even avatar, reinterpreting the age-old maxim “the clothes make the man.” Across the Substitutes and Dreamers, Double Dream reveals Wurm to be a sculptor of surprising economy, continually asking how much can be communicated with how little.
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Adriana Elgarresta, Global Director of Communications & Marketing
adriana@lehmannmaupin.com