The latest temporary addition to K11 MUSEA’s vast art collection featuring over 40 artists, Hot Dog Bus presents to the public the surreal experience of encountering a bright yellow modified vintage Volkswagen Bulli serving hot dogs at the entrance to K11 MUSEA, adjacent to the Sunken Plaza. Hot Dog Bus was loaned to Public Art Fund by K11 Group founder for display at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Characteristically manipulating form in order to turn expectations surrounding an everyday object on their head, Wurm creates in Hot Dog Bus a sculptural experience that challenges assumed understandings of art and consumption. Hot Dog Bus ends its month-long run at K11 Musea on 27 October 2019.
Renowned for redefining the boundaries differentiating spectator and participant, for Wurm, the participation of the spectator “completes” the work which invites visitors to explore the potential of human action to create sculpture. To create the piece, Wurm stripped the engine and interior of the vehicle and sculpted its exterior to create a bulbous form. Hog Dog Bus resonates with Hongkongers as the city’s old buses that sported red tops and mustard-yellow livery were known as “Hot Dogs”.
Curated under the direction of K11 Group founder Adrian Cheng, the K11 MUSEA art collection, with the addition of Hot Dog Bus, sets to reactivate Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, which has historically played a vital role in the exchange of ideas, and as the confluence of cultures in Hong Kong.
Adrian Cheng said: “It is my vision to make K11 MUSEA a Silicon Valley of Culture, where we can incubate local and international talents, and propagate culture. To bring Erwin’s Hot Dog Bus to this important location is also to inject art and culture into new consumer’s daily life and let our meticulously curated art collection mingle with architecture, design, fashion, furniture, gastronomy and sustainability, in turn reshaping Hong Kong’s waterfront culture.”
“Hot Dog Bus is a participatory piece of art, as I always want my work to give people the opportunity to interact with it. I was therefore very excited to learn about its inclusion in the art collection of Adrian Cheng’s K11 MUSEA, which shares the same ethos of making art and culture accessible. I can’t wait to see how this waterfront community will react to and engage with the sculpture. The idea behind this work is that one could say that gaining or losing weight is a sculptural work. The absurdity of something so ordinary, like gaining or losing weight, is interesting for me. So that is the reason I combined these two systems, the technical system of the vehicle and the biological system of the body. It evokes how when people have dogs, they slowly look like their dogs and the dogs come to look like their owners. It’s the same with the cars, they take on the property of their owners. This association with one’s own appearance goes beyond boarders and cultures. I’m going to enjoy watching the Hongkongers enjoy the hot dogs and thinking…will enough of these make me look like the vessel they were served in.” Said Austrian artist Erwin Wurm.
Hot Dog Bus will reinvent itself again to serve the Hong Kong community. In collaboration with The Butchers Club and plant-based grocery shop and cafe Green Common, freshly made hot dogs and drink options will be available on the Hot Dog Bus. The Classic Hot Dog (HKD68) features a Westaways hot dog sausage topped with The Butchers Club secret sauce, crispy maple bacon, cheddar cheese and fresh tomato served with a side of pickle chips. The vegan Beyond Hot Dog (HKD68) features a Beyond sausage, a plant-based sausage by Beyond Meat, served in a bun with mayonnaise, spring onion, fresh tomato and a side of homemade kimchi. Drinks offered include lemonade and honey citron soda (HKD25 each) and can also be ordered in a set with either hot dog (HKD80). The hog dogs and drink options will become part of the art project by Wurm, who believes ingesting is a way of sculpting one’s body, and that Hot Dog Bus is a “response to consumerism”.
Hot Dog Bus by Erwin Wurm was first exhibited as Curry Bus in 2015 at The Museum of Wolfsburg in Germany where it served currywurst, traditional German fast food sausages. It travelled to the United States last summer in New York City, Hot Dog Bus is the artist’s most ambitious and interactive sculpture in his series of “supersized” everyday objects.
