Martin Creed Work No. 227, The Lights Going On And Off 2000

  • Not on view

The content of this work is almost nothing: a gallery with bare walls in which the lights turn on and off in intervals of five seconds. This piece is based on a cycle of repetitive contradictions: each five-second phase is denied by the next. Creed controls the fundamental conditions ofvisibility within the gallery and redirects our attention to the walls that normally act as support and background for art objects. He treats the gallery as a medium to be molded, manipulating the existing lighting to create a new effect. Akin to John Cage's influential 1952 sound piece _4''33"—_a four-minute, thirty-three-second composition of silence—Creed's witty, sensorial work subverts the normal spatial and temporal parameters of viewing experience.

Gallery label from Out of Time: A Contemporary View, August 30, 2006–April 9, 2007.
Medium
Electrical timer (frequency five seconds on/five seconds off)
Dimensions
Dimensions variable
Credit
Fund for the Twenty-First Century
Object number
968.2005
Copyright
© 2023 Martin Creed
Department
Painting and Sculpture

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