Martin Creed, Robert Ryman

Hauser & Wirth is delighted to present a display of works by Martin Creed and Robert Ryman. For this special occasion we will be exhibiting a thirty-six panel work by Creed and a twelve panel work by Ryman. Martin Creed (b. 1968) produces works according to a series of rules within a predetermined conceptual framework. This particular presentation, Work No. 590 (2006), is an impressive series of black monochrome drawings. Each isolated sheet of A4 paper has been coloured using different felt-tip pens. One of the rules being applied by Creed is that the pen can never be drawn back over itself. The resulting images are unique and variable according to the type of pen deployed, a factor which is integral to the work. As with much of Creed’s output, our attention is drawn to commonplace objects that the viewer might rediscover in an entirely new light. Other key works by Creed include Work No. 329: Half the air in a given space (2004), a piece that uses party balloons to isolate half the air in a room. Creed is also known for self-reflective and profoundly deadpan sculptures such as Work No. 301: A sheet of paper crumpled into a ball (2003). Robert Ryman (b. 1930) has argued that every material has a built in code - a way of reacting that suits a given purpose. Throughout his career Ryman has experimented with the particular qualities of different pigments including the application of paint onto a variety of different painting surfaces. Apart from in his very early works, Ryman always uses the colour white. His Classico paintings of the late 1960s were named after the handmade ‘Classico’ paper favoured by the artist. This particular series numbers among his earliest composite works. Classico V (1968) is outstanding of a work from this period. The work seemingly informed, not only by the marks left behind by the masking tape that once held the paper to the wall, but also by the untouched paper exposed by layers of white synthetic polymer paint. Despite being made according to a set of constraints, Classico V possesses an abundance of variants to be found in the use of pigment and off-centred composition. It is a work of rare quality, one with a profound air of quiet, considered painterly depth.