Exhibitions

Erwin Wurm. Dreamers

Venice, Italy

A major solo exhibition dedicated to Austrian artist Erwin Wurm. A surreal, funny, slightly disturbing exhibition where the body becomes sculpture — and everyday objects start behaving like people.

Erwin Wurm
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Image credit

Erwin Wurm. Mind Bubble Walking Pink, 2024. © Markus Gradwohl

Meet the artist

The Movement

Contemporary Sculpture

ArtLovers Tip

This is not a decorative exhibition. It is funny, uncomfortable, intelligent, and very Venice: a dream with something slightly wrong inside. A must-see if you want Venice beyond beauty — Venice as a place where contemporary art can still make you laugh, think, and feel your own body differently.

Exhibition Highlights - What you'll see

This exhibition brings Erwin Wurm’s strange and brilliant universe into Palazzo Fortuny: bodies, clothes, objects, volume, absurdity, and humour all pushed into sculpture.

Wurm is famous for expanding what sculpture can be. Instead of thinking only about marble, bronze or monuments, he works with poses, time, clothing, cars, houses, bags, sausages, pillows, and the human body itself. His celebrated One Minute Sculptures, begun in the 1990s, ask people to perform temporary actions with everyday objects — turning the viewer into the artwork for a brief, absurd moment.

Here, the title Dreamers points to a softer but uncanny world: objects that seem alive, bodies that seem absent, clothes that suggest invisible people, and forms that feel comic at first — then strangely psychological. Wurm uses humour, but never only as a joke. Behind the absurdity there is a sharp reflection on identity, consumer culture, social pressure, and the way we inhabit our own bodies.

Worth the trip

Because Wurm makes contemporary sculpture feel immediate. You don’t need to “understand” sculpture in an academic way — you feel it through your body.

In Venice, during the 2026 art season, Dreamers is especially powerful because it transforms the historic Palazzo Fortuny into a space of physical and psychological distortion. The contrast is perfect: an old Venetian palace filled with strange contemporary bodies, empty clothes, inflated forms, and objects that seem to be dreaming.

It is also Wurm’s first major monographic exhibition in Italy, which makes it a particularly relevant stop for Venice 2026.

How to experience it

Go slowly and let the works feel absurd before trying to explain them.

Look at the bodies, but also at the absence of bodies. Look at the clothes as if they were portraits. Look at the humour, but don’t stop there — Wurm’s jokes often open into something deeper: status, anxiety, identity, consumption, and the strange performance of being human.

Venice, Italy

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Experience art in Venice

Italy

Venice is a city where art does not live inside museums only — it floats through palaces, churches, canals, biennials, private collections and contemporary pavilions.

For art lovers, Venice is not just a destination. It is a stage where every façade, bridge, church and canal becomes part of the experience. Avoid rushing Venice. Choose one main art area per day — Dorsoduro, San Marco, Castello, Giudecca — and let the city reveal itself between visits.

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