Upcoming Exhibitions
Sat, Apr 12, 2025 - Sun, Nov 16
The Towada Art Center will present Erwin Wurm’s first solo museum exhibition at a museum in Japan from Saturday, April 12, 2025, to Sunday, November 16, 2025. The Towada Art Center is the only institution in Japan with a permanent display of Wurm’s works, which include Fat Car and Fat House.
Recognized as one of Austria’s most significant contemporary artists, Erwin Wurm redefines and expands the boundaries of sculpture, employing a wide range of media—from traditional materials like plaster and metal to photography, clothing, and paint.
In this exhibition, Wurm will explore the human body, one of the most fundamental sculptural motifs, through themes of time, volume and surface, figuration, and representation. The human form—shaped by external influences such as clothing, furniture, language, and social ideologies—is depicted as fragile, mutable, and filled with boundless possibilities. Often absurd and paradoxical, Wurm’s works expose the structures underlying social norms, institutions, and power.
The exhibition will feature the Japan premiere of Wurm’s latest large-scale installation, School (2024), along with recent key works from his Skins and Flat Sculptures series.
Erwin Wurm
Born 1954 in Bruck an der Mur, lives and works in Vienna and Limberg, Austria. Studied at the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Over the course of his career, Erwin Wurm has radically expanded conceptions of sculpture, questioning its notions of time, mass and surface, abstraction and representation. Solo exhibitions include Deep, Museo Correr and Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (Italy, 2024) Trap of the Truth, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK, 2023) Erwin Wurm Photographs, Maison Européenne de la Photographie (France, 2020). His works showed at the Austrian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (Italy, 2017).
Title
Date
Location
Towada Art Center
Closed
Mondays (except for holidays, in which case closed the following day)
*Open April 28, May 6, August 4, and August 12, 2025
Admission
1,800 yen
200 yen discount for groups of 20 or more
Under 18: free
Organized by
Towada Art Center
Endorsed by
Austrian Cultural Forum Tokyo, Asahi Broadcasting Aomori Co., Ltd.,
Aomori Broadcasting Corporation, Aomori Television Broadcasting Co.,
Ltd., Aomori Fm Broadcasting, The Daily-Tohoku Shimbun Inc.,
The To-o Nippo Press, and Towada City Board of Education
Curator
Nakagawa Chieko
Fat House
2010
photo: Oyamada Kuniya
Fat Car
2010
photo: Oyamada Kuniya
School
2024
Photo: Rainer Iglar / Salzburg – Vienna
Courtesy: Albertina Modern, Vienna
Reference image
School
2024
Photo: Rainer Iglar / Salzburg – Vienna
Courtesy: Albertina Modern, Vienna
Reference image
Masse
2021
Photo: Markus Gradwohl
Reference image
Hour
2021
Photo: Markus Gradwohl
Reference image
Standing Floral II
2021
Photo: Markus Gradwohl
Reference image
No related events to display.