8/10/2023 0 Comments Craggs do it best![]() ![]() When viewed from afar, it becomes clear that Cragg's stainless steel columns are not just abstract conglomerations of stacked shapes, but are instead intended to resemble a human profile. However, looking at sculpture somehow the world can suddenly fix up again." As the artist described of a sculpture's capabilities, "there's an idea that sculpture is something solid and static, and that it's a frozen moment of time…Sculpture is relatively solid, for the main part, but so is our everyday material reality…although the world looks very solid, actually it's incomplete-it's totally flowing the whole time. While an industrial material, the steel takes on an almost liquefied trait that reads more like rippled water than a spherical mirror or dish.Īs one is faced with their own reflections in Elliptical Column, there is the culmination of the viewing experience which ends with the conversations the work inspires. While many of Cragg's contemporaries rely on the same reflective qualities for their own sculptures, the alternating recessions and projections of Cragg's globular, organic shapes create an even more varied surface that intentionally distorts its surroundings. Commissioned for the piece's current Miami owner, Elliptical Column is not complete until it is installed, a key part of its composition being the images and changing light reflected on its smooth surface. The reflections within the column's surface introduce the second dialogue-between the sculpture and the space it occupies. ![]() The steel informs the structure, and not vice versa, thus originating with the surface itself. Cragg's choice of a reflective, polished steel is a direct result of this aforementioned dialogue between sculptor and material. From the ground, the layers twist and turn with the curved axial support, creating a varied surface which reflects and distorts the space surrounding it. "Sculptures are often and at their best not just a result of an artist taking a material…but rather the result of a dialogue between the material and the artist," Cragg has said (Tony Cragg, "Articulated Column," in Tony Cragg familiae's exhibition catalogue, 2005).Ī tower of stainless steel, Elliptical Column is composed of steel layers stacked atop one another along a bending central axis. This first dialogue occurs during the production process. As exemplified in this particular piece from our 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, it is a sculpture's purpose to create a series of dialogues: those between sculptor and material, sculpture and its surroundings, and viewer and sculpture. ![]()
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