Tony Cragg

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Exhibition Catalogue, Bonn, Kunst-und Ausstellungsshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Tony Cragg: Signs of Life, 2003, p. 447, no. 400, illustration of another example in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Visible only upon extremely close inspection, there are a few shallow surface scratches and rub marks in isolated places. Further extremely close inspection reveals two pinhead-sized specks of loss towards the underside of the sculpture.
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At once strangely familiar yet foreign to our visual vocabulary, Tony Cragg’s Early Form is an intriguing example of the artist’s signature explorations of material and form that have characterised his ongoing sculptural practice over the past decades. Executed on a monumental scale, the work is both physically imposing and intellectually compelling, inviting the viewer to contemplate the existence of forms previously unknown.

Rising to prominence in the late 1970s with a radically original approach to sculpture, Tony Cragg’s work has since evolved from a taxonomical dissection of found objects to a more formal exploration of sculpture and materiality. Taking the shapes of different kinds of vessels as their starting point, the Early Forms series represent a fascinating bridge between the artist’s early and mature work. By dissecting disparate objects such as chemical flasks or ancient vessels, which the artist then rearranged and morphed into new shapes, these sculptures exist in the hybrid gap between the representation of actual space and an imagined sculptural language.

With a background as a lab researcher, Tony Cragg has always been interested in the infinite possibilities of sculpture, and its potential to create novel physical constellations that have no previous existence in our visual vocabulary. As the artist explained: “sculpture, which is a relatively rare, even marginal human activity, has become a basic study of the material world. It is not the slave of utilitarianism; it permits a journey of discovery that gives us a glimpse at the myriad of forms as yet unseen. If science attempts to explain the physics of our reality it is sculpture and art in general that gives it value and meaning” (Tony Cragg quoted in: Patrick Elliott, Tony Cragg, Sculptures and Drawings, London 2011, p. 1). Indeed, having departed from the familiar forms of industrial and ancient containers, the sculptor has arrived at a shape that is in every way new to the world we inhabit. The twisting and twirling matter of Early Form, suspended in an amorphousness that invokes an impossible familiarity, represents perhaps one of the most profound engagements with the spatial and material possibilities of sculpture - and certainly one of the most inventive.