Düsseldorf has a new permanent landmark in its public space. Erwin Wurm's monumental sculpture 'Gate' was unveiled on Thursday 5 November 2026 on Gustav-Gründgens-Platz, in front of the city's Schauspielhaus, by the Austrian artist together with mayor Stephan Keller. Donated by Wurm to the city, the work will remain on the square permanently.

The roughly four-metre-high sculpture is made of lacquered aluminium and measures 400 by 131 by 76 centimetres. Created in 2021, it belongs to Wurm's 'In the Skin' series, in which the artist explores the human body and its relationship to the space around it. The work was cast from the body of actor and artist Lars Eidinger, posed in the middle of an everyday gesture, and shows a sinewy slice of an absent, fully clothed figure twisting around an invisible form — a hollow, so-called 'thin sculpture' that reads as the after-image of a body in motion.

The form recalls Wurm's 'One Minute Sculptures' of the early 1990s, in which participants performed brief, instructed poses and became temporary statues themselves, and it continues his long-running play with the boundary between body and object, presence and absence. The city council approved the siting of the work on the square, and the sculpture now stands as a permanent gift from the artist to Düsseldorf. Before coming to Düsseldorf, 'Gate' stood in the Austrian Parliament in Vienna, and the gift was first announced in 2025 while the city was still looking for a suitable site.

The unveiling comes ahead of a larger Wurm exhibition planned at the Kunstpalast in 2027, which will present a comprehensive survey of the artist's work.