About
My work is simple and sophisticated at the same time….My picture of our society is that the things that unite us, at a very simple level, are the ordinary things we make to survive.
—Michael Craig-Martin
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Michael Craig-Martin, his first at Gagosian Gallery, London.
Throughout his career, Craig-Martin has explored the expressive and linguistic character of commonplace objects, evincing a dialogue between representation and reality in art. In the new paintings, outlines of everyday objects— an umbrella, a light bulb, a drinking glass — are drawn against a background of flat, vibrant colour. Over this he paints a single letter or combination of letters spelling commonplace words and phrases — 'sex', 'no' or 'we', and so on. Such apparently random groupings draw attention to the relation between line and colour, word and image. Craig-Martin turns the everyday objects that recur throughout his work into pictogram-like images while creating narrative tension by juxtaposing and layering images and text.
A is for Umbrella comprises paintings that combine text and image, together with a series of computer monitor works, including two self-portraits and a large triptych. The computer monitor works engage the viewer to participate in the very construction of meaning. Although the image is fixed (a self-portrait or a collection of personal objects) the colours slowly and constantly change in infinite, never-to-be-repeated combinations. The effects of this are immediate and seductive, a sensory experience with a seemingly organic entity. Colour is used to distinguish one object from another, or to delineate one part of an object from another. Craig-Martin has always been concerned with how to make sense of the world, and the relation between objects and the spaces they inhabit. In these new works, despite the highly sophisticated software that he employs, he retains his intuitive artistic sincerity.
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In Conversation
Michael Craig-Martin and Jan Dalley
Michael Craig-Martin and Jan Dalley sat down together in London as part of this year’s FT Weekend Festival. Join the two for a conversation about the artist’s long career in art, teaching, and writing, as well as his latest projects. A principal figure of British Conceptual art, Craig-Martin probes the relationship between objects and images, harnessing the human capacity to imagine absent forms through symbols and pictures.
Behind the Art
Michael Craig-Martin: Ordinariness
Join Michael Craig-Martin at his London studio as he speaks about his working methods, his interest in the ordinary, and his abiding concern for the sculptural.
The Parameters of Perception
Michael Craig-Martin and Jeffrey Sturges in conversation on Tom Wessselmann’s Standing Still Lifes.