Tony Cragg (b 1949), Parts of Life, 2014. Bronze 123 x 100 x 100 cm (48,43 x 39,37 x 39,37 in). Courtesy Tony Cragg et la galerie Thaddaeus Ropac © Tony Cragg

PARIS - L'exposition de la galerie Thaddaeus Ropac réunit 25 nouvelles œuvres de Tony Cragg, figure de la sculpture contemporaine. Venu à la sculpture par l'entremise de la performance et du land-art anglais, la pratique de Tony Cragg se distingue  par une formidable richesse et créativité plastique. L'artiste se définit comme «matérialiste», dans la mesure où le cœur de sa démarche réside dans l'exploration des matériaux. Entre ses mains, les objets récupérés et les déchets industriels, empilés, entassés, amoncelés, se prêtent à des interprétations inattendues. Dans ses œuvres récentes, il privilégie l'acier, le bronze et le bois pour créer des accumulations de strates presque géologiques.

Depuis quelques années, têtes et visages constituent des leitmotive de l'œuvre de Tony Cragg, et ses sculptures sont rythmées par un puissant mouvement de spirale. Les strates et les contorsions de la matière donnent naissance à des paysages corporels faits de pleins et de vides comme dans un jeu de positif-négatif. Tony Cragg conçoit ses sculptures à partir de «sédiments artistiques qui semblent provenir de strates temporelles de différentes ères» (Eva Maria Stadler, Tony Cragg-F.X. Messerschmidt, 2008.) L'étirement horizontal de ses formes biomorphiques rappelle les procédés employés par les futuristes italiens Umberto Boccioni et Giacomo Balla pour recréer l'impression de vitesse, tandis que l'élan vertical de ses sculptures érigées en colonnes n'est pas sans évoquer Constantin Brancusi, qui tendait lui aussi vers une simplification des formes naturelles au moyen d'un vocabulaire abstrait.  

Tony Cragg (b 1949), A Head, I Thought, 2011. Wood, 230 x 160 x 140 cm (90,55 x 62,99 x 55,12 in). Courtesy Tony Cragg et la galerie Thaddaeus Ropac © Tony Cragg

Que ce soit dans ses micro ou macrostructures, la nature constitue le thème dominant de l'oeuvre de Tony Cragg au cours des dix dernières années, à l'instar des sculptures monumentales Must Be, 2012, Mean Average, 2014 et Contradiction, 2014, présentées lors de l'exposition. Pour sa série intitulée Early Forms et commencée à la fin des années 1980, Tony Cragg a réalisé un ensemble de sculptures uniques inspirées de récipients de toute sortes, de la gourde antique au tube à essai, en passant par le pot de confiture, déformés et étirés en formes nouvelles ces récipients, de la catégories des premiers artefacts créés par l'homme.   

Au cours des années 1990, Tony Cragg fait évoluer ses Early Forms de manière de plus en plus complexe. Dans ses sculptures les plus récentes, l'artiste prolonge le concept initial de sa série, tout en poussant l'élasticité et le mouvement de ses compositions à un point tel qu'il devient difficile de croire qu'elles soient faites en bronze. La sculpture monumentale Stroke (2014), gigantesque coup de pinceau figé, semble exemplaire de cette recherche de dynamisme menée par l'artiste. Ses dernières sculptures se caractérisent également par une nouvelle manière de délimiter et de modeler la forme, à l'œuvre dansHardliner (2013), Parts of Life (2014), et Parts of Life II (2015), dont les surfaces extérieures semblent avoir été découpées presque sans effort. 

Tony Cragg (b 1949), Stroke, 2014. Bronze, 240 x 224 x 110 cm (94,49 x 88,19 x 43,31 in). Courtesy Tony Cragg et la galerie Thaddaeus Ropac © Tony Cragg

Les œuvres de Tony Cragg «ne sont pas des objets fermés, ils ne sont pas des ébauches totalement imperméables de réalités. Au contraire, leur façonnement particulier, leurs rongements perforants ou leurs lignes aventurées, tout cela les convertit en structures ouvertes, en béantes incitations à une hypothétique universalité.» (Demsothenes Davvetas, 2016). Tony Cragg se distingue par une quête incessante de formes inédites, mêlant les composants biomorphiques aux références technoïdes.  

Cette exposition se déroule en parallèle d'une exposition monographique de l'artiste au musée de l'Hermitage de Saint-Pétersbourg et d'une rétrospective du Von-der-Heydt-Museum, de la ville allemande de Wuppertal.

21 fév.-30 juin 2016. 

Tony Cragg (b 1949), Pair, 2014. Wood, 410 x 99 x 76 cm (161,42 x 38,98 x 29,92 in), 329 x 99 x 127 cm (129,53 x 38,98 x 50 in). Courtesy Tony Cragg et la galerie Thaddaeus Ropac © Tony Cragg

PARIS.- Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac hosting a comprehensive solo exhibition of new sculptures by Tony Cragg (b 1949), one of the most distinguished contemporary sculptors, in the vast halls of the gallery space in Paris Pantin. The exhibition features 25 new sculptures of steel, bronze, wood, fibreglass and stone. The exhibition coincides with one of the artist's solo exhibitions at the Eremitage St. Petersburg (March to June 2016) and a retrospective at the Von-der-Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal (April to August 2016). 

Cragg's sculptural œuvre was originally motivated by his encounter with English Land Art and Performance, and is still distinguished by an immense wealth of surprising formal inventions and combinations. Cragg sees himself as a materialist, constantly seeking to explore and expand new materials. He has frequently applied techniques such as stacking, layering and heaping to different types of waste material and everyday objects, giving them an unexpected interpretation. Here, it is primarily steel, bronze and wood that he uses for his almost geologically layered arrangements. 

"Cragg's materialism suggests several meanings. In its most comprehensive sense, it implies a philosophical point of view, a conception of the world concentrating on physical phenomena and those circumstances which can be directly deduced from them. His artistic work shows a view of the human being gained through his relation to the environment – ranging from geological formations to urban constructions, from the tools we use to shape the world to furniture and other objects we produce in order to satisfy our needs." (Lynne Cooke, 2003) 

Tony Cragg (b 1949), Hardliner, 2013. Bronze, 115 x 140 x 97 cm (45,28 x 55,12 x 38,19 in). Courtesy Tony Cragg et la galerie Thaddaeus Ropac © Tony Cragg

In recent years, heads and faces have been appearing like leitmotivs in Cragg's work. A morphing circular movement shapes the rhythm of the sculptures. Overlapping, layering and convolution give rise to body landscapes forming positives and negatives, asserting a form and at the same time mapping out their vacant spaces. Cragg develops his forms from "artistic sediments that appear to arise from different eras" (Eva Maria Stadler, 2008). The horizontal extension of the biomorphic form is reminiscent of futurist Italian speed fanatics like Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla, while the verticality of his pillar-like sculptures brings to mind Constantin Brancusi, who similarly arrived at a reduction of the natural form through his abstract formal language. Nature with all its structures, from micro to macro, has been the dominant theme of Tony Cragg’s works over the past ten years (such as the monumental sculptures Must Be, 2012, Mean Average, 2014 and Contradiction, 2014, shown in the exhibition). 

In Early Forms, a series of cast works, which began in the late 1980s, Cragg has created a catalogue of unique sculptural forms derived from a diverse range of vessel types - from ancient flasks to test-tubes, jam jars and detergent bottles - that are twisted and mutated together to make new forms. The title refers to the fact that vessels are among the simplest and earliest surviving man-made forms and, in archaeological terms, are important markers of culture. During the 1990s the Early Forms became increasingly complex. In his latest sculptures, Tony Cragg draws on the idea of the Early Forms and increases the elasticity and dynamics of their composition to such an extent, making it hard to believe that such forms could actually be made out of bronze. This dynamic reaches a preliminary peak in the monumental sculpture Stroke (2014), resembling a giant frozen brushstroke. 

Installation view. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg. Photo: Charles Duprat

A new way of cutting the shape, of fanning it out, is a further characteristic of his latest sculptures, such as Hardliner (2013), Parts of Life (2014) and Parts of Life II (2015), where the outer surfaces have apparently been effortlessly fragmented. 

Tony Cragg’s sculptures "are not closed objects, nor are they impenetrable, designed integral realities. To the contrary, their segmentation, their fracturing or lack of recti-linearity transforms them into open structures, into open motivations of a visual universality, of a visual cosmos. They are structures of a sculptural language that is ready to communicate with the others, the different, ready to be open to dialogue. Even the outlines of these sculptures are never classic geometrical structures, nor are they traditional optical narrations. The eye of the viewer falls upon them and, after the first contact, is directed towards a second reading, full of optical surprises and imbalances that are, however, structured in such a way that, despite their deceptive anarchy, they end up with a balanced, anarchic geometry" (Demsothenes Davvetas, 2015). 

Tony Cragg's distinguishing feature is his primary concern to find new, unprecedented forms that amaze the viewer by their unusual biomorphic and technoid references. A very apt remark which was made in 1911 by the Cubist sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon might well have come from Tony Cragg: "The sole purpose of the arts is neither description nor imitation, but the creation of unknown beings from elements which are always present but not apparent". 

A catalogue with texts by the Greek philosopher, poet and artist Demosthenes Davvetas will be published in April 2016 to accompany the exhibition.

Installation view. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg. Photo: Charles Duprat