 British artist Michael Craig-Martin poses in front of his piece at Gallery Hyundai in Jongno, central Seoul. / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai |
By Noh Hyun-gi
Across a sky blue panel, multicolor letters spell painting; line drawings of unrelated everyday objects — a fire extinguisher, chair and handcuffs — float on top of each other. There is nothing mysterious about this Michael Craig-Martin acrylic piece “Untitled (Painting).” In fact, all of his recent paintings are explicit, simple, and recognizable.
“I am like a magician who tells you all the tricks; you understand everything, but you are still surprised by the mystery,” he said at a press conference at Gallery Hyundai, March 15.
On display at “Michael Craig-Martin Words/Image/Desire” are 19 paintings and one sculpture from the British artist’s most recent body of work since 2007.
The 70-year-old uses identical images of mundane objects in his paintings to evoke personal associations and adds text to express abstract ideas such as desire, hope, and vice. He is fascinated with the ordinariness and the resulting invisibility of the items that allows people to relate in unique ways. “Viewers bring in so much to my work; you can’t help bringing (narratives). This makes my work sharable and individual at the same time.”
He is happy to showcase his work at the three-storey venue in Jongno, central Seoul, because the space allows one to view multiple artworks at the same time. “If you look at more than one piece, you can see that the artist is interested in.”
Flat acrylic images have not always been his mode of expression. He marked the history of conceptual art with his 1973 installation piece “An Oak Tree.” A glass of water on a glass shelf is accompanied by a text explaining why the glass full of water is indeed an oak tree.
He also fostered artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin who held collaborative exhibitions in London in late 1980s known as Young British Artists or yBa. Hirst refers to “An Oak Tree” as the most influential inspiration for his art works. “Damien said when he saw that work, it opened his mind to something different,” Craig-Martin recalled.
Chuckling at a question about auction prices, he said “I am happy that my students’ works are sold at higher prices than mine.”
The emeritus professor of fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London, believes artists must observe and practices this belief not only in their work but also in teaching and curating shows. “When I am teaching, I often find myself telling my students to stop being too creative. A lot is happening already without forcing something — it is more about observation than creation.”
The Dublin native who trained in the United States became interested in art when he found a book on modern art (Cezanne, Monet, Picasso) at age 12. “I understood instinctively a very important fact about art... You could never fully understand art — Art will always escape you, (be) bigger than you... And that, for some reason, really interested me.”
For his generation of artists the most important question was, “What is art?” For the creative souls of the 1960s and ‘70s, understanding the parameters of what they could do was crucial. “I don’t think artists nowadays are so concerned with this question anymore, because we have defined it.”
The exhibition runs through April 29. For more information, call (02) 2287-3500 or visit www.galleryhyundai.com.
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