The screen of Art Film Festival. “Erwin Wurm. The artist who swallowed the world”

As part of Midsummer Nights, an exhibition of artist films and documentary films dedicated to contemporary art and its protagonists, The Screen of Art Film Festival in collaboration with the Museo Novecento presents Erwin Wurm. The Artist who swallowed the world, a documentary that reconstructs the practice and activity of the Austrian artist known for his large installations in public space and for his unique, ironic and provocative approach to formalism.

The film will be introduced by Leonardo Bigazzi, curator of the festival, and Valentina Gensini.

Erwin Wurm. The Artist Who Swallowed The World – by Laurin Merz, Austria/Switzerland/Germany, 2012, 52′

(Presented by the Screen of Art Film Festival 2013)

With its houses and cars with ‘fattened’ volumes, and especially with the popular series of One Minute Sculptures (Sculptures for a minute) – that inspired the video of the song Can’t stop (2003) of the Red Hot Chili Peppers – Erwin Wurm has radically transformed the language and the fruition of contemporary sculpture. Reworking the concept of “social sculpture” by Joseph Beuys, a reference figure that emerges from his own stories, the well-known Austrian artist has taken this form of expression beyond the traditional boundaries of art, contaminating it with performance, photography and video, and using irony as a privileged means of critical reflection. Following the artist at work and during the staging of some recent exhibitions made during the last years in Beijing in Miami, we discover together with the director his personality and his vision of art.

Laurin Merz, born in 1975 in Aarau, studied film and journalism at the Universities of Bern and Zurich, graduating in 2007 in video at HSLU (Hochschule Luzern, Design & Kunst). He has collaborated with Swiss radio and television, also working as an independent director and producer. In 2006 he co-founded the production company Pixiu Films in Zurich. Selected filmography: Josephsohn Bildhauer (2007); 1968. Illusion oder Revolution (2008); Pioneerfamilie Piccard (2006)

The festival is organized as part of the Estate Fiorentina 2016 and is part of the film festival “Apriti Cinema” organized by Quelli della Compagnia di FST – Fondazione Sistema Toscana per il Comune di Firenze.