Martin Creed: Understanding

Public Art Fund announces Understanding, an exhibition featuring a new 25 foot-tall rotating ruby red neon sculpture by British artist Martin Creed commissioned specifically for Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6.

Sited on the Park’s southernmost pier overlooking the East River, its message will be visible from nearby Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, the river, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Work No. 2630, UNDERSTANDING (2016) is Creed’s largest public sculpture to date. Martin Creed: Understanding will be on view May 4 to October 23, 2016 at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6.

“Martin Creed is a poet of the everyday,” said Public Art Fund Director & Chief Curator Nicholas Baume. “His art confronts us with things we think we already know – inviting us to look at them afresh. ‘Understanding’ is a simple word with complex meanings; we might, for example, show understanding on an emotional level, even while not understanding what somebody has said or done. In this luminous and dynamic sculptural form, the word is isolated, monumental, and continually moving. Both literally and figuratively, Creed offers us a new vantage point to see the world. But is this a celebration of understanding or a challenge to us to understand more? Either way, Martin Creed’s disarming eloquence captures our imagination.”
Defined by red neon lights, the word ‘understanding’ is formed from individual steel letters and supported by an industrial I-beam mounted to a post and rotating on a central axis. The beam will spin at varying speeds, sometimes moving slowly and other times at a faster pace; the rhythm will be determined by a computerized program designed by Creed. The post stands in the center of a stepped base reminiscent of a ziggurat that will act as seating for park visitors. From Pier 6, the work will be highly visible—a luminous sign with a clear and poignant message—while visually interacting with the City’s well-known skyline. Work No. 2630,  UNDERSTANDING (2016) is the third and biggest iteration of Creed’s large-scale rotating neon text sculptures including Work No. 1357, Mothers (2012), which was exhibited in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and Work No. 2070, People (2014).