- 18
Tony Cragg
Estimate
Estimate Upon Request
bidding is closed
Description
- Tony Cragg
- CURRENT VERSION
- inscribed with the artist's monogram and stamped with the foundry mark Schmäke Düsseldorf
- bronze
- 160 by 60 by 70cm.
- 63 by 23 5/8 by 27 1/2 in.
Provenance
Acquired from the artist by the present owner
Exhibited
Meran, Merano Arte & Venice, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Tony Cragg In 4D - From Flux to Stability, 2011, detail illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Catalogue Note
Executed in 2010, Current Version is an extraordinary example of Tony Cragg's species of sculpture which appear as metabolic volumes vacillating about an indefinable central axis. Following its curvature, with layered ripples and bulging twists, it is a mesmerizing opportunity to practice visual logic - to trace its sinuous edges requires a rigorous sort of optical continuity. Discussing works such as Current Version Jon Wood writes: ‘Their settled stillness is immediately upset by the wobbling, spinning and off-kilter vertical forms and outlines of the sculptures themselves. Oval sections, or ellipses, have been staggered, shunted, one on top of another, and then sliced at an angle and smoothed away into amorphous, biomorphic sculptures’ (J. Wood, in Tony Cragg at Goodwood (exhibition catalogue), Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood, 2005, p. 101).
Current Version seems to possess its own uncanny vitality which defies the static nature of its immutable substance. Cragg spoke of the potential for this relationship with conviction: 'There is this idea that sculpture is static, or maybe even dead, but I feel absolutely contrary to that,' said Cragg in a 2007 interview. 'I'm not a religious person—I'm an absolute materialist—and for me material is exciting and ultimately sublime. When I'm involved in making sculpture, I'm looking for a system of belief or ethics in the material. I want that material to have a dynamic, to push and move and grow' (quoted in Robert Ayers, ‘The AI Interview: Tony Cragg’, in Art Info, 10th May 2007).
Current Version seems to possess its own uncanny vitality which defies the static nature of its immutable substance. Cragg spoke of the potential for this relationship with conviction: 'There is this idea that sculpture is static, or maybe even dead, but I feel absolutely contrary to that,' said Cragg in a 2007 interview. 'I'm not a religious person—I'm an absolute materialist—and for me material is exciting and ultimately sublime. When I'm involved in making sculpture, I'm looking for a system of belief or ethics in the material. I want that material to have a dynamic, to push and move and grow' (quoted in Robert Ayers, ‘The AI Interview: Tony Cragg’, in Art Info, 10th May 2007).