B. Wurtz: This Has No Name Opens at ICA LA

Installation view of ‘Untitled (Pan Paintings),’ 2013 in Four Collections, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, May 5–October 25, 2015. | Image courtesy of ICA LA, the artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

One of Los Angeles’ newest museums, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) holds a celebration on Sunday afternoon (Sept. 30) for the opening of This Has No Name, a solo show of work by CalArts alum B. Wurtz (Art MFA 80). The artist also gives a talk about the exhibition and his practice at 3 pm with ICA LA’s curator Jamillah James.

This Has No Name is Wurtz’s first major U.S. museum survey and showcases works spanning the artist’s 40-year career.

From the program:

For over forty years, Wurtz has developed a visual language that subverts the industrial austerity of Minimalism and centers the minutiae from daily life in ways poetic and whimsical. Wurtz’s idiosyncratic work in sculpture and assemblage revolves around the use of objects that refer, directly or indirectly, to the “acts of eating, sleeping and keeping warm,” inspired by an early drawing.

Food tins, clothing, plastic bags, mesh produce bags, and yogurt containers are transformed into elegant meditations on form and line while simultaneously underscoring the artist’s commitment to the ethics of reuse.

On Oct. 24, ICA LA screens Wurtz’s Super 8 short films made between 1979-1980, which expand upon the artist’s interest in and meditations on mundane objects and situations. After the screening, Paolo Davanso, co-founder of the Echo Park Film Center, and his team will give a presentation (with a live demo) on retro Super 8 filmmaking.

Wurtz was born in Pasadena, Calif., and lives and works in New York City. In 2015, he was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom. The following year, the exhibition traveled to La Casa Encendida, Madrid. He has had additional solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; and Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been included in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (France).

This Has No Name will be on-view through January 27, 2019. Admission to ICA LA is free.

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