A principal figure of British conceptual art, Craig-Martin probes the relationship between objects and images, harnessing the human capacity to imagine absent forms through symbols and pictures. The perceptual tension between object, representation, and language has been his central concern over the past four decades. During the late 1970s, he began to transcribe everyday items into pictorial readymades directly onto gallery walls, and since the 1990s onto canvas in conjunction with vivid artificial color. His drawings, paintings, and monumental steel sculptures are representations in the truest sense of the word, conveying familiar subjects as concisely as possible and thereby inviting each viewer’s personal response.
Michael Craig-Martin was born in Dublin in 1941, and studied at Yale University, New Haven from 1963 to 1966. He was a professor at Goldsmith’s College, London from 1974-88 and 1994-2000, where he was a significant influence on emerging British artists. Craig-Martin’s work is represented in public collections worldwide, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. Permanent large-scale installations are on view at Laban Dance Center, London and European Investment Bank, Luxembourg. Solo museum exhibitions include Always Now, Kunstverein Hannover (1998); IVAM, Valencia (2000); Living, Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Portugal (2001); Signs of Life, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2006); and Less Is Still More, Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany (2013). Retrospectives include Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1989); and Irish Museum of Modern Art (2006-07). Craig-Martin lives and works in London.
Michael Craig-Martin at Chatsworth, an installation of large-scale steel sculpture, is on view at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire through June 29, 2014. A major exhibition of recent work by Craig-Martin will be presented at Himalayas Museum, Shanghai from January 30-March 30, 2015
