Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg presents Mindset, a solo exhibition of new works by Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, on view from 27 July through 27 September 2025. Known for his playful yet incisive approach to sculpture, Wurm continues to probe the complex relationships between body, identity, and social constructs. In Mindset, he examines how thought, form, and materiality intertwine, turning the invisible into something tangible.
ART
At the center of the exhibition is Wurm’s new series Mind Bubbles, created in 2024. These ovular forms rest on elongated, spindly legs, reimagining the thought bubbles familiar from comic strips as anthropomorphic beings. Wurm describes them as “a symbol of an idea or a specific thought, which is not described.” Their cartoon-like proportions evoke humor while simultaneously confronting viewers with the abstract weight of inner consciousness. With their exaggerated shapes and knitted sweaters, they extend Wurm’s ongoing exploration of how external signs, such as clothing, shape our understanding of identity and social codes.
The Mind Bubbles connect to earlier works such as the Bag Sculptures, where luxury handbags sprouted legs in a commentary on consumerism and fashion’s ties to self-image. Yet where the Bag Sculptures addressed status and external markers of identity, the Mind Bubbles represent the inner sphere: the unspoken, abstract dimension of thought. Wurm’s exaggerations of form, far from cynical, emphasize the sculptural potential of everyday realities and their translation into psychological states.
Alongside these works, Mindset includes small-format ceramic sculptures created with the Austrian ceramic manufacturer Gmundner Keramik. Everyday vessels such as cups and jugs are assembled into human-like figures, glazed in vivid colors that heighten their expressive qualities. The ceramics, marked by intentional deformation, celebrate clay as a gestural medium. They echo Wurm’s performative approach to sculpture, where material is pushed to the edge of collapse in order to reveal new meanings.
The exhibition reflects Wurm’s longstanding interest in recurring psychological patterns and the ways they manifest physically. By deforming scale, exaggerating poses, and combining human traits with objects, Wurm crafts sculptural metaphors for the absurdity and complexity of lived experience. His works invite viewers to reconsider how inner states, anxieties, desires, fleeting thoughts, might take shape if made visible in three dimensions.
As Wurm notes, “the body is our first measure of relation to the rest of the world.” In Mindset, he extends that measure beyond flesh to include thought itself, rendering the invisible visible through absurd yet poignant sculptural forms. The exhibition, staged in the Salzburg Halle of Thaddaeus Ropac, underscores Wurm’s ability to animate both material and concept, offering a vivid reflection on the entanglement of body, mind, and society.
