Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz presents ‘Step Paintings’ by Martin Creed, Turner Prize-winning artist, performer, composer and ‘Punk poet.’
“Colors can help you feel better,” says Creed. “Paintings are the arrangement of colors for pleasure.” The exhibition brings together a selection of Creed’s Step Paintings from the past twelve years, alongside four neon works. In Creed’s Step Paintings, colors build up like a staircase to heaven, like a wedding cake, like favorite socks in a drawer, like a house on an island in the middle of the sea.
Creed has become known for hugely varied work, which is by turns uncompromising, entertaining, shocking and beautiful. Martin Creed’s multidisciplinary practice delights in the everyday, and his works include deadpan, minimalist installations; expressionistic, rapidly painted or drawn portraits; and neon signs filled with wry or positive messaging. Creed challenges the distinction between art and life’s mundanities throughout his performances, prints, films, and music. His Turner Prize – winning Work 227: The lights going on and off (2000), for example, simply features an empty gallery space whose lights turn on and off every five seconds. Other works comprise common materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic bags, Lego bricks, and party balloons. Creed names his works numerically, further creating a sense of democracy within his oeuvre. He has enjoyed solo exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Museo de Arte de Lima. His work has sold for six figures at auction.
