Go See – Edinburgh: Martin Creed ‘Down Over Up’ at Fruitmarket Gallery through October 31st, 2010
Friday, August 27th, 2010
Martin Creed, Work No. 928, 2008, courtesy of The Guardian.
As part of the Edinburgh Arts Festival, Fruitmarket is honoring one of Britain’s most popular and esteemed artists, Martin Creed, in a major solo exhibition of recent and newly-commissioned work. Entitled “Down Over Up,” the show focuses on basic visual properties like the differentiation of size, proportion, and tone of everyday objects such as chairs, tables, boxes, and Lego pieces. Creed has often been criticized for the accessible quality of his materials and technique; while this aspect of his practice is visible in “Down Over Up,” the artist has also incorporated more conventional art forms such as paintings, drawings, and sculpture into the exhibition.
Creed initially won critical acclaim for his minimalistic sculptures, in which he rearranges everyday objects. He manipulates the common as a material representation of his primary preoccupation: modern culture. The artist often creates work in order to elicit particular responses from the viewer, by deploying a spectrum of motifs ranging from the absurd to the familiar.