1. Ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous 2: having no rational or orderly relationship to human life : meaningless ; also : lacking order or value 3: dealing with the absurd or with absurdism
— ab·surd·ly adverb
— ab·surd·ness noun
Merriam_Webster Online
2. Contrary to reason or propriety; obviously and flatly opposed to manifest truth; inconsistent with the plain dictates of common sense; logically contradictory; nonsensical; ridiculous.
That what appears to be completely absurd for one person, means perfect normality for the other one. It’s only a matter of perspective.
Another point of view, the change of perspective: that’s where learning sets off. To incorporate a new idea, to have an “insight” can be a sometimes shocking, sometimes sad, sometimes a joyful experience.
In arts you can try out this change of perspective in a playful manner. Art can be an arrangement of the disarranged.
Erwin Wurms red van actually is bending itself to turn off. That what we take for granted, is changing its course. The absurd can be so disquieting because it unsettles the settled. We might loose our footing. The absurd, a fissure in the pristine skin of the everyday.
In his “one minute sculptures” there is a twofold dislocation: Wurm relocates our idea of the sculpture and he shifts human behaviour from so-called normality to the absurd.
At his best his dry, easy handed, pointedly witty statements evoke the horrors that might be hidden behind the masks of the everyday. At it’s worst, Erwin Wurms humor is disputable.
Art so often is burdened by its self-declared importance: look I am so meaningful. Here art seems to be at ease: playful and light-handed.
