13.03. - 08.04.2023
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY Frühling 2023
12

Tony Cragg

1949 Liverpool

Biographie

Stack 2017

Murano glass, unique
h 90 cm, w 26 cm, d 17 cm
Signed at the bottom: Cragg
Expertise unterzeichnet vom Künstler liegt bei.

Literature

Vgl.: Tony Cragg. Silicone Dioxide, exhibition catalogue, Museo del Vetro, Murano 2022, ill S. 71

Tony Cragg continues to work with glass, a material that appeared in his work in the early 1980s and 1990s. For the Biennale di Venezia, he created several works in Murano glass as part of the curated exhibition series 'Glasstress'.

Adventurously stacked on top of each other, Tony Cragg builds the skyscraper-like glass tower 'Stack'. This is an important theme for the artist, who has always been interested in the dynamics created by stacking different forms and materials. The small cubes of transparent glass are reminiscent of ice cubes, which, when exposed to higher temperatures, can only form an ephemeral shape. As they melt, the surfaces no longer adhere to each other, and individual building blocks of the imposing tower, almost a metre high, slip and topple from their original position. It is a slow-motion, inexorable process that is unfolding before our eyes. We see a building that seems to be losing its statics, the moment before its inevitable collapse is captured forever. It is through this same suspension of movement that the sculpture acquires an incredible dynamism and mobility, an element that characterises Tony Cragg's work. It is the forces of organic, internal, barely perceptible movement, sensitivity and intensity that define his vocabulary.

"Sculpture is just a way of dealing with the big world, looking for new forms and formulating new questions about the world we live in, about reality". (Tony Cragg)

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