Michael Craig-Martin: Sculpture

This volume celebrates a new body of work by British artist Michael Craig-Martin--monumental, vividly colored sculptures that explore the nature of illusion and belief.

Since the 1960s Michael Craig-Martin has developed a vocabulary of imagery based on common, everyday items. In drawings, paintings, installations, and sculptures, he has probed the relationship between objects and images, perception and reality. This book presents recent large-scale sculptures by the artist, produced with exacting draftsmanship and fabricated in powder-coated steel in vibrant shades. The elegant forms of these works appear like drawings in the air. Each three to four meters tall, they depict items ranging from the timeless--as in Fork and Knife (green and purple) (2019)--to the distinctly contemporary, as in Headphones (magenta) (2019).

This volume was published to commemorate the first indoor presentation of the artist's sculpture, at Gagosian, London, in 2019. A beautiful plate section documents each of the works in the exhibition, and dynamic installation views highlight the artist's exploration of spatial relationships through the juxtaposition of color. An in-depth conversation with Craig-Martin by Lynn Zelevansky traces his development as an artist, addresses the centrality of drawing to his practice, and illuminates the relationship between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional in his work.

Lynn Zelevansky is an art historian and curator who has published widely on modern and contemporary art. She was Henry J. Heinz II Director, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, from 2009 to 2017.