The Hayward’s Martin Creed show is more like a glorious tour of his mind. Adrian Searle has the time of his life squeezing through balloons, ducking a steel beam – and watching an endless erection.
The variety of Creed’s work makes it hard to talk about touch, manner or voice. But they’re there all the same. His art is marked by lightness and a kind of bravery. It is all a matter of timing, placement and contrast. The show doesn’t flag. Creed’s art is filled with systems, rules and ways of paring things down to some kind of irreducible physical fact or activity: counting, aligning, ordering, arranging.
Creed’s new show at the Hayward in London is great – one of the best solo exhibitions I’ve seen in the gallery.
Watch the video.