Bjørn Nørgaard
Recycling Art

Bjørn Nørgaard’s sculpture Recycling Art combines two all-too-familiar objects from completely different spheres – art and everyday life. The white plaster cast of the famous Venus of Milo protrudes from a green recycling bin. Nørgaard takes the sticker on the bin, which shows a spiral with several arrows emanating from it and the words “Recycling Art” – presumably referring to the art of recycling – literally. The plaster cast of an iconic, classical Greek sculpture in the bin is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the practice of copying and quoting, which has been common in art history since its inception, as well as to the wear and tear of images that have been reproduced too often. Nørgaard himself writes about the object: “Einstein’s famous formula E = mc2 states that the amount of energy in the universe is constant but takes different forms. Recycling art states that the amount of intellectual/artistic energy is constant, but appears in different forms. Sensory perception, experience, and intuition map our understanding of reality in visual constants that transform into ever new formations.”¹
Text: Eva Scharrer

¹ Bjørn Nørgaard in an E-mail to René Block in July 2022.