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” by Erwin Wurm, a colour photograph taken in 1997. It belongs to a massive series that began in 1988 and has grown to include photographs, video, and live performance. In each piece, Wurm gives a written or pictorial instruction to a participant—sometimes an anonymous passer‑by, a fellow artist, or even the artist himself. The subject then holds a deliberately absurd pose for exactly sixty seconds. While the moment is captured on film, the photograph is only the final record; the true artwork is the live act, the interaction between body and object, and the ticking of the clock.
Typical objects range from simple items like a bucket or a bicycle to everyday goods such as clothing or perishable food. The resulting images are playful, provocative, and sometimes physically challenging. Wurm uses the format to blur the lines between sculpture, photography, and performance, asking viewers to question what constitutes an object, a form, or a moment of art. The series invites a brief, suspended contemplation of how we engage with the world around us, revealing humor and absurdity in the ordinary.
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.
