Ceal Floyer

Ceal Floyer (born 1968 in Karachi, Pakistan) is a British visual artist known for her work in a variety of mediums that share a humorously wry approach to language and the semiotics of the everyday. In a catalogue essay for her show at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, Jeremy Millar comments: "It seems clear, I think, that word-play is central to Floyer's work as both a generative and interpretive force...."
She currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Floyer received a BFA from Goldsmith's College, London, in 1994 and was awarded a Philip Morris scholarship at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin in 1997.

She consistently engages the discourse surrounding conceptual art, minimalism, post-minimalism, the ready-made and technology within her work. Her work is often remarked upon for its visual austerity that stands in stark contrast to the abundant verbal implications and how it precipitates greater conjecture. For example, her work Bucket (1999) is a black bucket accompanied by the sound of a leak. However, if you look closely, there is a CD player inside the bucket, emitting the sound of the leak. Similarly, Matches (2010) is an artwork that places three boxes of matches on a shelf, a pun on whether or not they different boxes of matches "match". In a catalogue essay for her exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1999, Berhard Fibicher wrote:

"Both Carousel and Bucket function like classical metaphors -- albeit not on a linguistic level (although the titles are often crucial to deciphering Ceal Floyer's picture puzzles), but at that of sensorial perception. The metaphor operates by conflating the distance between two objects, by revealing their similarity. Surprising similarities make us seek the characteristics shared by various objects. Ceal Floyer instrumentalises the distance between objects, or between the object and its name, reducing that distance so much by way of revealing similarity, that one object may become identical with another, or with its name".

Select solo exhibitions

• Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2005)
• Safn, Reykjavik, Iceland (2006)
• Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld (2007)
• Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples (2008)
• Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2009)
• KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2009)
• Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2010)
• Kunstverein Kohln (Cologne) (2013)
• Museion, Bozen, Italy (2014)
• Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2015)

Select group exhibitions

• 53rd Venice Biennale (2009)
• Documenta 13 (2012)
• The Part in the Story Where A Part Becomes A Part of Something Else, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2014)
• A Thousand Doors, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2014)

• Clark, Robert (February 11, 2001). "Ceal Floyer, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham". The Guardian. 
• ^ Prince, Mark. "Ceal Floyer at Lisson", Art in America, Retrieved 17 November 2014.
• Fibicher, Bernhard (1999). Ceal Floyer. Bern, Switzerland: Kunsthalle Bern. pp. 8–9. ISBN 3-85780-123-9. 
• ^
• Robecchi, Michele. "Ceal Floyer at KW Institute in Berlin", Flash Art, Retrieved 15 July 2015.
• "Ceal Floyer", Contemporary Art Daily, Retrieved 9 November 2014.

• Tate
• Museum of Modern Art
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

• "Light Switch", Tate, Retrieved 9 November 2014.
• "Ceal Floyer", Museum of Modern Art, Retrieved 9 November 2014.
• "Our Collection - Ceal Floyer", San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Retrieved 17 November 2014.

Floyer is currently represented by the Lisson Gallery in London, 303 Gallery in New York and Esther Schipper in Berlin.

In 2007 she received the Kunstpreis from the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. In 2009 she was awarded the Nam June Paik Award.