Martin Creed, Complete Works (Paperback)

This long-overdue survey of the London-based, 2001 Turner Prize-winner's work--the first comprehensive look at his career--makes up for that delay by reproducing each and every one of his more than 500 works, a total that's easy to track because each piece has a number in lieu of a title. Creed's sculptures, installations and drawings come from the objects, works and sounds of everyday life. Constantly searching for the essential nature of things, he uses the simplest materials to create a world in which obsessions and fantasies radically alter reality and transform it into a catalogue of rigid rules and unexpected exceptions. His work is simultaneously spectacular and subtle, playful and severe, at times almost cruel in its stark dryness. Creed's pieces are characterized by their economy of means and site specificity. This awareness of context and the role of the viewer leads to a variety of unexpected artistic propositions: a protrusion from the wall, a sheet of paper crumpled into a ball, a door opening and closing, the lights going on and off, or a soundtrack inside a moving elevator.