One Minute Sculptures
- Artist: Erwin Wurm
- Date: 1997
- Medium: Photograph, c-print on paper
- Dimensions: support: 450 x 300 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “One Minute Sculptures” photograph by Erwin Wurm, made in 1997. It’s part of a long‑running series that began in 1988, where ordinary people—sometimes the artist himself—are instructed to pose with everyday objects for exactly sixty seconds. The camera freezes the moment, and the image becomes the record of a fleeting performance.
What you see here is a playful, almost absurd tableau: a person, a bucket, a bicycle or a piece of clothing, all arranged in a strange contortion that would seem impossible if it weren’t held for a whole minute. The humor comes from the absurdity, but Wurm also uses these moments to question the boundary between sculpture, performance, and photography. It invites you to notice how bodies and objects interact, how a moment can be captured and then lost, and how the ordinary can become extraordinary when you pause long enough.
See it in person
One Minute Sculptures is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
