CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/25/2020

Rethinking Thanksgiving with 'B. Wurtz: Pan Paintings'

Featured spreads are reproduced from B. Wurtz: Pan Paintings, a new release from Hunters Point Press collecting 70 out of more than 500 abstract paintings made by the artist on disposable aluminum roasting pans and to-go containers since 1990. Essayist Erica Cooke writes, "In salvaging these throwaway pans for works of art, Wurtz underscores the American tradition of making do with what we have by investing in quotidian items—of drawing out their life-affirming qualities. While his application of bold color vivifies the industrial templates—and, in turn, the anonymous designers behind them—there is equal vitality in the act of viewing these Pan Paintings in substantial groupings on the gallery wall or in the pages of this book. The variety of sizes and shapes in aluminum pans, from small circles to large ovals and perfect squares to subdivided rectangles, registers the breadth of contexts in which such containers might appear: single-serve TV dinner, backyard barbecue, Thanksgiving potluck, restaurant delivery, unfussy wedding buffet, leftover lunch at work, book-club spread, or church-basement support gathering. Whether providing food for one or many, in public or in private, these containers attest to daily nourishment; their capacity to also exist as ready-made abstractions reminds us that art partakes in such everyday sustenance, deepening our access to body and soul—and to each other."