Mono/Chrome: Michael Craig-Martin

at the Royal Academy, London 

until 10 December 

Michael Craig-Martin's works grab our attention with their brilliant colour and clarity of vision, and the sensory overload they come close to delivering can blind us to their subtlety and meaning. Even if he insists that 'art should be experienced rather than interpreted', there are very specific reasons for everything he does. He plays with our perception, and makes it clear that we are hard-wired to recognise objects in the world around us, make sense of what we see, and even create narratives to explain our observations. 

His paintings and installations are profoundly visual, and yet they have they origins in conceptual art. Arguably one of the most maligned practices of the 20th century, the true value of this form is widely misunderstood, and goes to the very heart of what art is and can be. His early work, An Oak Tree (1973) is one of the most significant pieces of the genre, challenging our perceptions, and reaffirming what an artist can do. It is with this work that the Royal Academy's retrospective starts. It is also where the exhibition ends, with a typically self-reflexive, retrospective nod from the artist on an enormous scale in his latest installation, Octagon (2024). 

We will make a virtual journey through the exhibition, discovering the early developments in Craig-Martin's ideas, techniques and media in which colour often played no part. Once colour burst into his art, we will continue by discerning the long, slow and subtle evolution of his brilliantly chromatic signature works.