Kelley Walker

Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Brussels, Jewish Museum of Belgium, After Images, 2011, p. 143, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the reverse is brighter and more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals three areas where the digital print of the reverse is lifting slightly, namely on two corner tips and noticeably along one edge. All irregularities on the goldleaf are inherent to the artist's choice of medium and working process.
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The recycle sign is undoubtedly one of the most emblematic symbols of Kelly Walker’s complex and multi-faceted oeuvre, at the heart of which lies a profound interest in the appropriation and re-contextualisation of symbols of popular culture. Throughout many of the artist’s most acclaimed bodies of work, such as the Black Star Press chocolate and silkscreen works, a clever amalgamation of sources, techniques and materials creates a thought-provoking reflection on the function of images in contemporary culture. Recycle Sign, itself an repurposed symbol that also references the act of reusing, is therefore the ultimate representation of what is at the core of Walker’s influential practice.

Kelley Walker’s interest in the appropriation of such popular images continues the artistic strategies that were first pioneered by Andy Warhol, but with a distinctly contemporary approach to techniques and materials. As the artist explains: “When I made the recycling signs, I took the sign off a cereal box, enlarged it on the computer, and had it digitally laser-cut out of steel. I then made a couple of different skins to cover the signs (...) Applying these skins allowed the sign to be marked out and/or packaged, and in doing this the signs could then begin to operate in a way that interested me - as a kind of naturalised logo that I could work with and respond to” (Kelley Walker quoted in: Bob Nickas, 'Support Failure!', Le Magazine, 2007, pp. 74-75).

This interest in the recycle sign as a kind of logo reflects Walker’s fascination not simply with the material recycling of objects, but indeed with the remnants of symbols after their utilitarian value has disappeared. In this work not only the negative outline of the recycling symbol takes on new formal and contextual meaning - referring to a complex larger than the recyclability of an individual cereal box - but also the colourful enlarged image of the product itself, which as a signifier of cheap consumer products is contrasted with the precious gold leaf on the opposite side of the sculpture. This duality is echoed in the material condition of the work, which acts both as a two-dimensional support for the gold leaf and printed image, as well as being a three-dimensional sculptural object in its own right - thus being a perfect example of how Kelley Walker hijacks symbols from visual culture to create new interpretative possibilities, both as images and as objects.