Selected Works 1970-2015

The first major publication of B. Wurtz’s work, B. Wurtz: Selected Works 1970–2015 is published on the occasion of a comprehensive survey exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK in 2015 and La Casa Encendida, Madrid.

For more than 40 years, B. Wurtz has collected common, domestic objects—carrier bags, aluminium roasting trays, buttons, shoelaces—and repurposed them into meticulously formal constructions that are balanced, fragile, yet sometimes discordant. His raw material is the stuff we constantly use and constantly overlook things that connect to life in its most everyday sense.

Bringing elegance to the mundane and revealing a beauty in materials that would otherwise be so easily disposed of, Wurtz’s sculpture maintains an adherence to classical forms and a play with art history, all the while responding to three fundamental needs outlined early in the artist’s career: sleeping, eating and keeping warm.