Erwin Wurm (b. 1954)

I am interested in the object, in liberating it from its field, giving it a new validity and meaning. It is integrated in a different system of values and ideas: in that of art. In this way it loses its function and takes on another. I do not want to go so far as to say that the object is no longer recognized. Rather I want to have the appeal of the recognition effect on the one hand and that of alienation on the other, which the object emanates.

Erwin Wurm, interview with Desire Scheller, Design Vienna, Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, exh. cat., Vienna 1989, p. 29