Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1239894
18 Sir Tony Cragg CBE RA b. 1949 Born in Liverpool in UK, Cragg moved to Germany and became an instructor at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf in 1970s. Cragg was awarded the Turner Prize in 1988 and a CBE in 2002. His works are held in MOMA New York, Tate Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC among others. Tony Cragg is one of the world's foremost sculptors. A process of continual enquiry infuses Cragg's practice with a restless energy, manifest in his continuing exploration of a multitude of materials and ways of reshaping the world around us. His axiom is that, "there are many more things that do not exist than things that do exist", and with this he points to a deep well of things and forms that are as yet beyond our perception. Sculpture is for Cragg a method to unlock this enormous potential not just for new forms but the new meanings, dreams and language that will become associated to them. For him it is a method for discovering the as yet unseen. The juxtaposition of geometries with organic forms has been a constant theme in Cragg's earlier works and represents for him the dual nature of most things we see around us, given that our own mindset is inherently and necessarily rational, in order to build coherent forms, but is also obviously complex and subjective enough to be described as organic. Cragg's white Onyx Sail sculpture opens new lines of investigation that derive from his Versus series. Cragg never forgets the path he has taken to arrive at his latest works which still find references in some of his earliest works, such as the stacks, assemblages and figurative collages made from discarded materials. If nothing is as it first seems, then these disorienting sensations reflect Cragg's own consciousness, dense layering of visual phenomena and historical references, one on top of another. This creation of an enhanced and extruded reality as experienced through technology and the multiple perspectives afforded to us by the pace and prisms of modern life, is further evidence of a sculptor working at the height of his powers. Sail, 2016 White Onyx 220 x 114 x 34 cm Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery www.lissongallery.com Everything that is constructed has a coherence and emotional quality, a pattern and a connectivity. Where in our society would you like to find more coherence and connectivity?