As is usually the case with this British artist’s interventions and objects, it’s easy to tell you what Martin Creed’s new work is: more than three thousand floor tiles, no two alike, spread across the floor of Emmanuel Perrotin’s gallery. It’s harder to describe what it does. Transforming two galleries, the stairs between them, and the office, Work No. 330, 2004, leaves no visible space unaltered. A dizzying array of colors and decorative motifs abound, brought into easy juxtapositions that make sense only en masse. Solids and stripes, floral patterns and cornucopias of fruit, glossy and matte finishes, the hand designed and the machine milled are all presented as six-by-six-inch squares. All manner of spaces, and the memories associated with them, are evoked, from your mother’s kitchen to the local Laundromat. Creed’s work often fails to require more than cursory acknowledgment—as is evidenced by a selection of other, smaller pieces in Perrotin’s main gallery, down the block—which makes the resonance of Work No. 330 all the more notable.
