One Minute Sculptures
- Artist: Erwin Wurm
- Date: 1997
- Medium: Video, monitor, colour and sound (stereo)
- Dimensions: duration: 46min, 47sec
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is "One Minute Sculptures" by Erwin Wurm, a video that runs almost 47 minutes. It’s part of a long‑running series that started in 1988. Wurm gives written or pictorial instructions to people—sometimes strangers, sometimes artists—who then hold a bizarre pose for exactly one minute. The pose is captured by a camera, creating a snapshot of absurdity that blends performance, sculpture, and photography. In this compilation, you can watch a variety of objects—clothes, buckets, bicycles, doorframes, even food—become part of the action. The video is a meta‑view of the process itself: the brief moment of interaction, the act of holding still, and the resulting photograph that serves as the lasting record. It invites you to think about the limits of everyday objects, the role of the participant, and how time frames can turn ordinary moments into striking, sometimes hilarious, stills.
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.
