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. 

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 Both works, Nurse and Double Dreamer (2026), feature figures whose entire upper bodies have been replaced by massive pillows, squashed as if pulled off an unmade bed.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.