Houston’s Discovery Green, the 12-acre downtown park created by a public-private partnership between the City of Houston and the nonprofit Discovery Green Conservancy, has announced the upcoming installation The Shape of Things: Michael Craig-Martin at Discovery Green. The show of large sculptures by British artist Michael Craig-Martin will be on view during park hours from Thursday, Aug. 1 to Sunday, Nov. 3, 2019. This is the first exhibition of Craig-Martin’s sculptures in Texas, and only the second venue in the United States.
London-based Craig-Martin attended Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture from 1961 to 1966, studying alongside Chuck Close, Brice Marden and Richard Serra. As a longtime professor at Goldsmith’s in London, he was an influence on many key figures in the Young British Artist generation, including Damien Hirst, Michael Landy, Gary Hume, Fiona Rae, Ian Davenport, Angus Fairhurst, and Richard Patterson.
Craig-Martin’s work explores the form and symbolism of everyday objects through a variety of media including line drawings, paintings, large-scale installations, prints and, since 2011, powder-coated steel sculptures.
The exhibition at Discovery Green includes six sculptures ranging from 8 to 12 feet high, depicting objects such as an umbrella, a wheelbarrow, a light bulb, and a shoe. Judy Nyquist, chair of the Discovery Green Conservancy’s public art committee, says of the exhibition:
“These large-scale works are simultaneously simple and bold, elegant and humorous, minimal yet approachable. The over-scaled outlines convey the effect of windows, through which visitors can view and experience the landscape in and around our urban oasis in unexpected ways.”
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