Martin Creed, Work No. 997, 2009© Adam Faraday
The art of Martin Creed is to make art look easy. Many of the works in his show at The Fruitmarket Gallery are no more than stacks of objects, diminishing in size.
But the fact is, no one else in 500 years of recent art history has ever thought to pile up chairs quite like this, or tables, or paintings, or lego bricks.
He is of course also responsible for the first recorded artwork to consist of a light blinking on and off, or of balls of screwed up paper, or runners in an art gallery.
In each event, Creed sets up a simple formula and works through it in a pure, single minded way. His work is a minimalism where the materials do not count.
For a highlight of the current show he intervenes with the gallery staircase to equate steps of different heights with notes of different pitches. It becomes a keyboard. And the same logic is behind a sound installation in the lift.
Locals will soon be able to ascend and descend a major piece of Creed artwork in the city centre. The artist is rebuilding the city’s main link between its new and old towns, the famous Scotsman’s Steps, using marble sourced from all over the world.
Admission free. Open 11am-6pm Monday to Saturday (12pm-5pm Sunday).
Visit Mark Sheerin’s contemporary art blog and follow him on Twitter.
