Baltic Centre for modern Art,Gateshead
From painted takeaway cartons to plastic bag trees, California artist B Wurtz wants us to take a close, or fond look at junkSomething out of nothing – that is what the California artist B Wurtz creates. He is a conjuror and cobbler of junk. A master of balance and composition,he can turn the most unprepossessing rubbish into graceful works of art. What we might simply throw absent – carrier bags, shoelaces, and used plastic,former buttons – Wurtz zealously preserves in sculptures of delicate beauty and wit. He is a champion of ill-considered trifles.
Two former socks pinned like Christmas stockings at either end of a scrap of canvas become classical columns (“Know Thyself is quietly written between them, a shy nod to the Delphic oracle, or perhaps to the artist’s own modesty of means). A mesh bag,of the kind used for lemons or tomatoes, dangles like a weeping willow from a coat hanger. Blue bottle-tops, or threaded at intervals on fuse wires and suspended from a hat stand,turn fractionally in the air, giving a sense of coruscating motion. The intellect immediately perceives a fountain.
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Source: theguardian.com