Bill Wurtz, known professionally as B. Wurtz is (b. 1948,

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. I ...

) is an American painter and sculptor. He lives and works in

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Education

Wurtz received a BA from the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

in 1970, and an MFA from the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

in 1980.

Work

Wurtz is known for his transformations of commonplace materials into sculptures. Wurtz's sculptures are characterized by an appreciation for the ubiquitous, common-place items he uses: plastic grocery bags, disposable baking trays, coat hangers, tuna tins, buttons, shoelaces, cardboard, and construction lumber. Wurtz's work has been described as a "

bricolage In the arts, ''bricolage'' ( French for "DIY" or "do-it-yourself projects") is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work constructed using mixed media. The term ''bricolage'' ...

of found objects." He has shown his work widely in solo and group exhibitions internationally. He works in a variety of scales from small-scale sculptures to large-scale public sculptures. In 2015, The

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (also known simply as (the) Baltic, stylised as BALTIC) is a centre for contemporary art located on the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. It hosts a frequently changing variety ...

in Gateshead, United Kingdom mounted a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work that traveled to La Casa Encendida in Madrid through 2016. In 2018, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles mounted a major solo exhibition of his work, ''This Has No Name''. His work has been reviewed in the

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Artsy Artsy, formally known as Art.sy Inc is a New York City based online art brokerage. Its main business is developing and hosting website for numerous galleries as well as selling art for them. It utilizes a search engine and database to draw conn ...

, Surface,

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...

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, among other publications.

Collections

Wurtz's work is represented in the permanent collections of the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, the

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary ...

, the

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum becam ...

, among others.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wurtz, B. 20th-century American artists 21st-century American artists 1948 births Living people