Tony Cragg (*1949)

The sculptor Tony Cragg constantly demonstrates new possible ways of bringing together forms and meanings, nature and the human world. Prism-like bodies, constructed from wooden plates to which different varnishes have been applied, are arranged in an arch. The boxes, cobbled together from cheap wood, are on the one hand a reaction to the perfect objects of Minimalism, which relate only to themselves and the space. On the other hand the ensemble deliberately recalls a landscape painting or a city skyline. The metal canisters, the concrete ring and the plastic tube stand out as industrially produced objects, but can equally be interpreted as elements of either the landscape or the cityscape painting. The scale is somewhere between sculpture, model and stage-set. The whole effect suggests an intermediate sphere in which the physical presence is subordinate to the pictorial, and the concrete and the illusory are linked to one another. ___