Martin Creed. Work No. 360: Half the Air in a Given Space, 2015; installation view. Courtesy of Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Photo: RJ Sánchez, Solstream Studios.

Over the past decade, Creed has made about a dozen pieces involving colored latex balloons of various dimensions. The exact number of balloons for each installation is calculated via a mathematical calculation; the volume of the gallery is halved and then divided by the equivalent volume of a sixteen-inch balloon in cubic feet. Work No. 360 turns the Henry’s lower-level gallery into a space of play that simultaneously, thanks to the sheer density of the balloons, makes one self-conscious of the volume that one’s body takes up while masking the true dimensions of the surrounding white cube.

First viewed from above, the installation swells and moves, recalling a wave pool, although the source of the balloons’ undulations isn’t entirely clear. It’s only as you descend a gradually sloping ramp to the gallery’s glass entrance below that you realize people inside are causing the bursts and ripples seen on the surface. Once you have been given a green wristband (to track attendance), squeezed in through the glass door, and let the initial wave of shock wear off, it’s hard not to start reaching for metaphor: the aforementioned mosh pit, a snowstorm, a fog bank, or, to expand on Sylvia Plath’s remarkably prescient phrasing, a herd of “oval-soul animals/taking up half the space.”

Martin Creed. Work No. 360: Half the Air in a Given Space, 2015; installation view. Courtesy of Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Photo: RJ Sánchez, Solstream Studios.

Whatever your choice, nothing quite encapsulates the physical experience of the space. The balloons both impede and warp one’s range of motion and field of vision, making the bounded space they’re contained in feel infinite and decidedly more viscous. That initial endorphin-fueled sense of fun is tempered by unease (and for the truly claustrophobic, panic would immediately ensue). Getting separated from someone is easy, whereas—as attested to by the anxious fidgeting and fruitless calls of the parents lined up outside the gallery, still waiting for their children to emerge—finding each other is far more challenging. Bumping into another person frequently came as an unexpected surprise, despite the sounds of the balloons squeaking and rubbing together (or popping underfoot), which offered a kind of echolocation for sensing other people’s trajectories.

Martin Creed. Work No. 360: Half the Air in a Given Space, 2015; installation view. Courtesy of Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Photo: RJ Sánchez, Solstream Studios.

Through the piece’s accompanying wall text, the Henry dutifully posits Andy Warhol’s bespoke, pillow-like silver clouds as an art-historical precedent and counterpoint to Creed’s denser massing of commercially produced gray orbs. Given the range of feelings triggered by the piece, a more instructive comparison might be to the large-scale, participatory amusements of Creed’s contemporary, Carsten Holler. Broadly speaking, both artists are interested in setting into place conditions that heighten, trigger, or play off of sensory-based affective states such as excitement, surprise, and wonder. However, unlike Holler’s giant corkscrew slides or flight-simulating harnesses, Work No. 360 achieves these thrilling ends through simpler means: It makes solid the volume that is already present within the space, by using a readily available object. Creed refrains from couching his work in the aura of pseudoscience that, in Holler’s case, often feels pretentious and condescending. If both Holler and Creed invite us to reappraise institutional space as a site for play, Creed goes further. He asks those who step inside Work No. 360 to reencounter play as a kind of viscerally felt negotiation of boundaries, emotions, and interpersonal recognition. Perhaps it’s all much simpler than that, and Work No. 360 boils down to one question that it leaves unanswered: What’s more fun—running through a room full of balloons or running through a room full of balloons in an art museum?

Martin Creed: Work No. 360: Half the Air in a Given Space is on view at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle through September 27, 2015.

Buster Simpson. The Crow’s Nest, 1980; photo-documentation of the agitprop performance. Courtesy of Hearst Newspapers LLC/Seattlepi.com. Photo: John Holmberg

It is a fitting opening gesture for an exhibition in which Simpson is less passive subject than instigator and agent. The pieces collected here—from documentation of agitprop actions and installation-based pieces to sculptures made from reclaimed materials—make clear he views these roles as endemic to being an artist. There is a workmanlike quality to Simpson’s approach, something underscored by SURVEYOR’s hand-drafted wall texts (which a local sign maker was commissioned to execute) and reflected in his preference to describe his output simply as “projects.”

Buster Simpson. Untitled, 1974; photo-documentation of the street action. Courtesy of the artist

“Interventions” could just as easily apply. At a very basic level, Simpson’s modus operandi is to assess and frequently redress human impact on local ecosystems, in both an environmental sense but also in a more expanded capacity that encompasses habitats, neighborhoods, industries, and histories, in particular those local to the Pacific Northwest. Simpson’s logic often follows that of environmental law expert Douglas P. Wheeler’s recommendation that “[t]o halt the decline of an ecosystem, it is necessary to think like an ecosystem.”

Buster Simpson. Hudson River Purge, 1991 (still); color video of agitprop performance of the same title; TRT 28 min. Courtesy of the artist

Many of the pieces in SURVEYOR present themselves as solutions, both aesthetic and practical, to such decline. Double Header Finial (2013), the midcentury modern–looking brass sculpture covered in protuberances, answers the question of how to increase crow populations in urban habitats (provide more pole-top perches). The broken limestone disc on display is a remnant from the action Hudson River Purge (1983–91), in which Simpson threw similar stones into the Hudson’s headwaters to help neutralize acidity caused by pollution. Ph Indicator Umbrella (2013) uses a common household object to raise awareness of the same issue but from the other side of the condensation cycle.

Buster Simpson. Woodman, 1974; photo-documentation of the street action. Courtesy of the artist

Other projects utilize processes as solutions. Failing to save a sixty-year-old cherry tree slated for demolition as part of a condominium development after physically occupying it in a crow’s nest constructed of materials from the construction site in 1979, Simpson carved a ladder from the felled “witness to history” six years later to use to climb into the next tree that was threatened. Both the ladder and photo-documentation of the original occupation are on display. (It’s telling that clips of Simpson in various city council meetings are mixed into the home movies and studio footage that loop on three wall-mounted flatscreens; working within bureaucratic channels frequently has its place in his process as well, even if the resulting project takes a critical stance toward institutional decision making).

Buster Simpson. Shared Solar Clothesline, 1978; photo-documentation of the installation. Courtesy of the artist

Simpson is also not afraid of the occasional grand gesture. In the 1983 performance Projecting Limestone Purge, a naked Simpson hurled pieces of limestone engraved with the word “purge” at the World Trade Center. The video transfer of the original 8mm documentation of the piece drives home the inevitable David and Goliath imagery even more—the twin towers loom at a distance from Simpson’s volleys, making his efforts appear all the more dogged. This scale is reversed in SURVEYOR’s final room, which collects what Simpson calls his Tools of Poetic Utility (1973–present), Brobdingnagian versions of a craftsman’s basics—a plumb, a level, a grinding wheel— sculpted in glass, steel, and stone. Beautiful and fragile as they are, they are still functional if no longer utilitarian. No mere trophies to artistic hubris, they are reminders that there are still solutions that need finding and alternatives to propose. There is still work to be done, and not by Simpson’s hands alone.

BUSTER SIMPSON // SURVEYOR is on view at the Frye Museum of Art, in Seattle, through October 13, 2013.