Bill Wurtz, known professionally as B. Wurtz is (b. 1948, Pasadena, California) [1] is an American painter and sculptor. He lives and works in New York City. [2]
Wurtz received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1980. [2]
Wurtz is known for his transformations of commonplace materials into sculptures. [3] 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. [4]
Wurtz's work has been described as a " bricolage of found objects." [1] 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 in Gateshead, United Kingdom mounted a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work that traveled to La Casa Encendida in Madrid through 2016. [3] [5] In 2018, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles mounted a major solo exhibition of his work, This Has No Name. [6]
His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, [7] Artsy, [8] Surface, [9] Artforum, [10] Frieze, [4] among other publications.
Wurtz's work is represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, [11] the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, [12] the Portland Art Museum, [13] among others.