Purple Art
[June 8 2016]
Martin Creed “The Back Door” exhibition curated by Tom Eccles and Hans Ulrich Obrist at Park Avenue Armory, New York
MARTIN CREED the king of whacky and wonderful has returned to New York taking over the historic Park Avenue Armory’s corridors till the 7th of August with a show titled “The Back Door”. The exhibition curated by TOM ECCLES and HANS ULRICH OBRIST brings together the largest ever US survey of CREED’s work to date. The show unveils sculptural interventions, paintings, installations and performances featured across the entire first floor of the Armory’s head house including an intriguing new piece of work commissioned specifically for the Drill Hall.
In TOM ECCLE’s words “The Back Door” conveys CREEDs ‘minimalist maximalism’ through a jumble gym of exhibited mixed media inflected by ‘dumb’ real life metaphors that are either extremely mundane or are taboo yet constitute pivotal essences of human existence.
At the end of the show perhaps the spectator’s knee-jerk reaction to CREED’s homespun philosophy is a grunt that his work is no more than a nonsensical mockery of art, nevertheless it is precisely what CREED takes on his mantle to explore: how the socially pre-fixed stance to experiencing art (as a high brow event) interferes with the onlooker’s evaluation of the spectacle. Subsequently CREED takes to tracing the definition of what art might be, how everyday matters and that which is ‘stupid’ can be and should be embraced and enjoyed as visual, enlived momentums.
According to CREED, while one in real life must kid themselves to be, in art one does not need to, hence the humor and poignancy that shape his artistic investigation to un-think the normative and tease out the un-orchestrated and un-rehearsed undercurrents of reality.
On view until August 7th, 2016 at Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave, New York.
Text Kinga Rajzak and Photo Alexis Dahan
