Oversized Thoughts and the Fragmented Figure
20. September 2025
Daniel Gianfranceschi
Thaddaeus Ropac’s Salzburg locations currently present both a Daniel Richter show as well as new works by Erwin Wurm. Richter’s contribution seems to be, stylistically, interwoven with the works the artist showed at Kunsthalle Tübingen in 2023, whereas Wurm’s newest effort seems to be a reproduction of what he has been doing throughout his career: oversizing to no end and with very little depth
In Mit elben Birnen – a play on words from a Hölderlin poem that is made to resonate the “current political climate”, as indicated in the exhibition statement – Richter shows his tried and true knack for drifting in and out of figuration, without ever falling into the trap of “I-think-I’ve-seen-this-in-Francis-Bacon-izing” the work due to the oblique fragmentation of the subjects painted. In fact, instead of trying to politicize something that does not need it – for, when Richter wishes to be political, he certainly has shown that he can do so quite well – one would be much better off in taking in these new works on a purely aesthetic level; something the overtly academical world of art has somehow forgotten to be an option at all.
These paintings will not cure world hunger, and they might also not revolutionize the forthcoming historicity of painting, but they are visually striking, and perhaps that is exactly the point they want to reach. In fact, even if the suggested dismemberment of the figure, prevalent in works such as Witreid (2025), might sound violent, these are actually joyous paintings, and the recent documentary on the artist (2023’s “Daniel Richter” by Pepe Danquart) only proves this point, given the way he is seen working: Andy-Stott tracks at full volume, parrots flying around and bright, contrasting colours. Who would not have fun working like that? Beyond this, these newer paintings seem to exist in the liminal space between the aforementioned deformed figures of the likes of Bacon, Freud, and Keith Cunningham, and the figurative attempts of the Jungen Wilden and auteurs like Baselitz, Fetting, and Hödicke, culminating in a series of works (like Mit Elben in denselben (2025)) that end up acting like half a déjà vu, where one is able to pinpoint possible references, but the suggested reality is still a completely different one entirely.
Richter never feels self-indulgent or over-confident; this new production straddles the edge between comfortable, tried-and-true abstraction and the uncanny.
Even while this new production by Richter is perhaps not the most innovative, bordering on having hit a plateau and now just rehashing past styles, they work because they never reveal themselves fully, giving the inquisitive audience a chance to lose themselves in each possible limb, gesture or gesticulation. They also, thankfully, still retain a sense of relationship to the body of the onlooker, not dwelling in the overtly macho mentality of “the bigger, the better”. For how furtive each figure seems to appear (or disappear), the paintings presented at Villa Kast echo moments of stillness and contemplation, tapping into the “kitsch” of brightly contrasted and highly saturated paintings only to have a laugh at themselves in the first place.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the Erwin Wurm show Mindset at Ropac’s Salzburg Halle. Here, the artist rehashes ideas of form, size and subjecthood in an effort that lacks any real depth or weight (which is funny considering the material of most of the sculptures being bronze and aluminium). In fact, it is not necessarily each individual work that feels redundant, but Wurm’s insistence on a theme that, even though it surely sells well, by now echoes the silent laughter of a joke not being funny anymore.
Arguably, many of Wurm‘s newest productions are deserving of nothing but a quick “ha ha”-moment upon seeing them for the first time. Having delivered their last hurrah of irony, the works suddenly appear hollow and lacking any intrinsic quality beyond their tendency to look slightly out of place and silly in the garden of whoever might be buying them. According to the press statement, these works give meaning to our inner world and our thoughts. My question, however, is: what does this even mean? Are my thoughts oversized (like in works such as Little Bertha (Mind Bubbles), (2025))? Are they made out of handbags and speech bubbles with elongated legs? Last time I checked, it has not been the case.
Wurm’s works feel like they are stuck in a self-inflicted past; a past that denies its own future due to the works’ insistence on becoming a collective, momentary inside-joke. Mindset is a sculptural clearance-sale, sure to sell out, but at what cost?
In fact, the surrealistic approach to figuration inherent in Wurm’s practice, surely charming at times, does not deliver on its own promise and always crumbles when related to real life parameters, which are everything but pink blobs with legs and oversized pickles (although the latter never cease to be, at least, humorous and almost tautologically funny). The sculptures neither relate to the human body nor to its surrounding; all they seem to do, is relate to a constructed reality, made to seem like a real one in favour of blindsiding the audience into believing that irony, propagated over a long period of time, suddenly turns into truth. Wurm’s newest sculptures, however, are, if anything, a testament to the power of momentary jokes, a faint pat on the back from a witty sense of humour with an uncertain future. Works like Tall Gray (Mind Bubbles) (2024) are plays on form, quite ingenuous and expertly crafted ones at that, but certainly not a way into our own, supposedly repressed or almost forgotten psychic world.
bis 27. September
Mit elben Birnen
Daniel Richter
Thaddaeus Ropac | Salzburg Villa Kast
bis 4. Oktober
Mindset
Erwin Wurm
Thaddaeus Ropac | Salzburg Halle
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