working through softness at museo fortuny
At Museo Fortuny in Venice, Erwin Wurm’s Dreamers turns its attention to small gestures, bodily awareness, and the slow work of rethinking how forms hold meaning. The show aligns within the idea of Radical Softness, which turns attention toward intimacy, repair, and sustained acts of attention.
Installed within the layered interiors of the Venetian palazzo, the exhibition reads as a series of minor adjustments to perception, each one asking how sculpture might register presence through lightweight contact and imbalance.
The timing, alongside the wider atmosphere of the Venice Art Biennale, sharpens this reading. Wurm’s work has long engaged humor and distortion, yet here the emphasis sits elsewhere. The body appears as something provisional, something that can be shaped for a moment and then released. That temporary state becomes the core material.
installation view, Erwin Wurm, Dreamers, Museo Fortuny
erwin wurm revives his ‘one minute sculptures’ in venice
On the upper floor, Erwin Wurm’s familiar One Minute Sculptures return as an entry point to Dreamers in Venice. Instructions prompt visitors to position themselves with chairs, clothing, or books, holding awkward poses that hover between effort and stillness. The action lasts a minute, yet the experience lingers in the body. It is an exercise in attention, a small choreography that foregrounds weight, balance, and the limits of control.
Rather than presenting sculpture as fixed mass, the artist frames it within Museo Fortuny as duration. The form exists in the act itself, then slips away, leaving behind a trace through documentation or memory. This approach aligns with a softer understanding of structure. The work does not insist on permanence. It asks for participation and then lets go. As described by the artist’s team, the gesture functions as a ‘taxidermy of the moment,’ preserving something fleeting without freezing it entirely.
installation view, Erwin Wurm, Dreamers, Museo Fortuny
cushions that carry the body
The Dreamers series, which gives the exhibition its title, shifts the focus toward objects by Erwin Wurm that seem to absorb the human figure. Oversized cushions rest on limbs that emerge from beneath them, suggesting bodies that have partially disappeared into fabric. The compositions feel unstable, as if they could collapse or settle further at any time.
There is a physical softness here that extends into a psychological register. These works describe a state between rest and withdrawal, where the body folds into itself. The tension comes from that partial visibility. Legs or arms hold the weight, yet the central mass remains opaque. Wurm turns comfort into something ambiguous, where softness carries both support and pressure.
installation view, Erwin Wurm, Dreamers, Museo Fortuny
garments without bodies
Another thread runs through the Substitutes series, where clothing appears without the figures that once animated it. Shirts, jackets, and textiles hang or stand with a residual sense of occupation. They feel like containers that still remember movement.
Placed within Fortuny’s rooms, these pieces enter into a dialogue with the history of fabric and form embedded in the building. The comparison to Mariano Fortuny’s garments becomes clear. Both operate as extensions of the body, though Wurm’s works hold onto the moment after departure. The softness here lies in that absence, in the way material carries a trace without fully resolving it.
installation view, Erwin Wurm, Dreamers, Museo Fortuny
installation view, Erwin Wurm, Dreamers, Museo Fortuny