MARTIN CREED
Work No. 679
2007
Acryl auf Leinwand
101 x 76 cm

Turner Prize winner Martin Creed was born in 1968 in Wakefield, England. From the age of three he lived in Glasgow, Scotland. Between 1986 and 1990 he studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. After art school he lived and worked in London until 2001, when he moved to Alicudi, Italy. He currently lives and works in London and Alicudi. British art critic Jonathan Jones said that, “Creed is a social artist; the true magic of his work lies in the way it interacts with people and places.”

By identifying his works primarily through a numbering system, Creed accords them equal status, regardless of size or material. He has said “I find that it’s difficult to choose, to decide that one thing’s more important than the other … So, what I try and do is to choose without having to make decisions.” His idiosyncratic approach is born out of this refusal to make decisions and a playful concern with the conundrum of wanting both to make something and nothing: “the problem was to attempt to establish, amongst other things, what material something could be, what shape something could be, what size something could be, how something could be constructed, how something could be situated … how many of something there could be, or should be, if any, if at all.”, the artist says. Creed’s interrogation of his own motives reveals an anxiety about “making something extra for the world.”

Artist, musician, composer and performer, Creed’s multi-disciplinary practice draws on the everyday. He transforms common materials and actions into surprising meditations on existence, choice and perception, and the invisible structures that shape our everyday experience. His art continually overturns our expectations and is characterised by his subversive wit. ‘Work No. 679’ (2007) is one of a series of paintings that the artist started making in 2006. Each work consists of one colour of paint applied according to the range of sizes available in one standard pack of household brushes.

The paintings emblematise a number of central themes and strategies found in much of Creed’s work, such as an economy of means and processes, minimal ordering and incrementation, and a certain playfulness. In this particular case the work demonstrates the artist’s reluctance to make overly conscious choices, specifically about what size of brush to select. Using all of the brushes equally is a way of avoiding having to choose one over another. Creed’s paint choice can be linked to the artist’s approach to an acknowledged influence of Frank Stella, who once said that in each of his canvases he was trying to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.