The University of Pittsburgh Museum Studies Exhibition Seminar is pleased to present MARTIN CREED: more and less, a solo exhibition of Creed’s genre-bending work. The show, curated by the class with the guidance of Nicholas Chambers, The Milton Fine Curator of Art at The Andy Warhol Museum, and the assistance of Isabelle Chartier, curator of the University Art Gallery, opens with a reception on Tuesday, November 5th from 6-8:30 pm. Complimentary refreshments will be served. Floortalks will take place on Tuesday, November 19th from 6-8:30 pm. The show runs through November 26th. Regular gallery hours are Monday-Friday 10 am-4 pm, with expanded hours Tuesday, November 19, 10 am-8:30 pm and Saturday, November 23, 12-5 pm. The gallery also opens by appointment. The University Art Gallery is located on the first floor of the Frick Fine Arts building on Schenley Drive, across from the main branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Admission is always free.
Each of the five rooms of the gallery features one Creed work, ranging from the challenging, playful video and sound installations Sick film and Blowing a raspberry to the deceptively simple Planks of wood and Work No. 960 (a row of cacti arranged in descending order of altitude). Also included are All the sculpture in a collection, which highlights the University Art Gallery’s eclectic collection and will span more than one location, as well as A crumpled ball of paper in every room, which will be dispersed throughout the entire Frick Fine Arts building.
Though he draws on the strategies of Arte Povera, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, Creed -- whose artistic process is intrinsically linked to his emotions, calls himself an Expressionist. The exhibition offers simple, direct questions about the function, purpose and place of art, and indeed, a piece like Work No. 121 A crumpled ball of paper in every room is so seamlessly born of and knitted into the everyday that it barely announces its presence. Utilizing seemingly mundane objects, Creed explores themes of repetition, order, comfort, equality, and isolation, inviting the viewer to discover the everyday as art.
The University Art Gallery is very grateful to the Fine Foundation, Pittsburgh Zoo, Phipps Conservancy, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tuscon, Gavin Brown Enterprises and Martin Creed studio for their enthusiastic support of the exhibition.
For more information, contact Isabelle Chartier at uag@pitt.edu or call 412-648-2423. Like us on Facebook at University Art Gallery-University of Pittsburgh.