Tony Cragg
The renowned British sculptor Tony Cragg explores the complex relationships between the natural and man-made world to create an innovative, distinctive sculptural language. Born in Liverpool, Cragg has lived and worked in Wuppertal, Germany since 1979. He has lectured at the Berlin Academy of Arts and the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts with his work shown at important international exhibitions since the 1980’s.
A self-described 'radical materialist', the artist is “interested in the internal structures of material that result in their external appearance.” Originally informed by both British land art and performance art, his work is inspired by the macro and micro structures found in nature, as well as an engagement with industrial materials and processes. He constantly explores and expands the possibilities of new materials which, in turn, help to determine the form each sculpture takes and the emotional register it occupies.
In his early works, Cragg created accumulations of found objects, later applying the same stacking principles to thin layers of wood to form undulating organic structures. These works recall natural geological forms, such as the sedimentation of mineral particles to create strata or the weathering of rock by the forces of wind and water. Recent works suggest the movement and transience of elements caught in the process of transformation – as in stainless steel forms that convey the fluidity of molten metal.
Cragg's overlapping and convoluted forms often give rise to figurative landscapes that suggest abstracted faces or heads. The implied motion of these biomorphic figures is reminiscent of Italian Futurists such as Umberto Boccioni, while their attenuated verticality recalls Constantin Brancusi's figures, in which he similarly reduced natural forms to create a unique sculptural language. Cragg's primary concern is an examination of how forms function in and interact with space, whether physical or psychological. The interplay between positive and negative space becomes a key structuring principle in his works, heightening the viewer's awareness of their own relationship to space and the material world.
