Erwin Wurm engages with the established history of sculpture by pushing its boundaries to new and exciting possibilities that incorporate participatory, temporal and psychological elements. Big Disobedience is a larger-than-life version of Wurm’s Disobedience from 2014, where the artist utilizes clothing in place of the body as a sculptural element to define the human form. The title of the work is inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, reflecting Wurm’s ideas about political and social correctness, a theme explored throughout his practice.
Wurm often uses absurd and comic elements of contemporary society, particularly in relation to the human body. In his sculpture, he has repeatedly extended the fragile boundary defining a visible form from inside and outside, fundamentally challenging and questioning the viewer’s perception of reality.
