In the late 1960s, Cragg, intrigued by the observation and study of the material world, left the field of scienceto pursue a career as an artist. Over half a century and more than 400 solo exhibitions later, Cragg hasestablished himself as one of the most influential sculptors working today, widely recognised for his lifelongfascination and virtuosity with materials. Marian Goodman Gallery has had the honour of representing Craggfor over forty years and is thrilled to bring this new exhibition of his work to Los Angeles.

A significant presentation of works will be shown throughout the galleries, lobby, and garden, demonstratingthe formal, material, and emotive range of sculpture that Cragg has been working on since 2018. As isdistinctive of his oeuvre, these works are the outcome of a profound and restless fascination with materialproperties. Cragg works to capture the emotion, meaning, and beauty of a material, as well as the rationalstructure that is used to express its form beyond its modern utilitarian principles. As seen across theexhibition, the artist notably works in ‘families’ of sculpture—continuously inventing new forms in seriesthat often share a single title. His works encourage us to think sculpturally, to consider material as anextension of the self.

‘For Tony Cragg, an engagement with material is an investigation into seeing beneath and beyond the surfaceof all things. In an epoch of information overload .... we are caught between the production of a flatteneduniverse, where the forms we encounter are geometrically dull and predictable, and a materially activeuniverse, where we are engaged with the structural and voluminous dynamics of all kinds of phenomena.What we believe to be seeing and what is happening at a microscopic level, that is between the world of surfaceimpressions and the world of material engagements, is part of Cragg’s continued practice.’ (from _Thinking_Sculpturally in Tony Cragg: A Rare Category of Objects)

Accumulations and communities of forms are often present in Cragg’s work, as evidenced in the work In NoTime (2018) a wood sculpture made of abstracted forms in aggregate turning variably along an axis. Cragg’sinterest in geological forms and his strategies of stratification, layering, and compilation can be seen here.Similarly, the parity between a sculptural object and rocky landscape is evoked in the stone works, O__ff theMountain (2023).

In the Main Gallery, Cragg presents the anthropomorphic, interlocked forms of the Integers (2022) and thestratified layers of Masks (2021) which summon an ancient and contemporary past. The new black _Masks_(2023), made from stacked planes of bog oak wood compressed to form striations of rounded strata, resemblesorganic structures, expressing its material substance in constructive form.

The Incident works (2022-3) comprise a newer series that has recently provided a great fascination for theartist. Exclusively made in both Corten and stainless steel, they draw from the industrial, dominant presenceof these materials in our built environment, but intrinsically resist their legacy of pre-formatted materials. Inthe Incidents, Cragg deliberately subverts our experience of them through vibrant, organic, and gravity-resisting forms that embody energy and verticality, and a free range of expression.

The newest forms, Stand (2023), in Corten steel and stainless steel, represent the exploration of a silhouette,or a profile that enlarges and expands into space on a human scale. As a sculptural form, it expresses a largevolume outside of itself which becomes an extension of ourselves or can be seen as a tangible object.

Cragg’s Hedge (2023) is from a series based originally on the artist’s childhood memory of playing in thehedgerows found in the English countryside. These Corten works take the literal form of a single or doublehedge, which, at once organic and landscaped, is conveyed as a lively, interwoven tangle of rounded planes ofsteel. Proposing a counter-narrative to steel’s industrial past, the sculpture, with its lyrical nature, offers anentirely new strain of organic forms in Cragg’s work.

In a complementary method, Versus (2023), a brilliant sculpture in bronze in a seemingly arrested state ofmovement, utilises numerous patterned forms to radiate the energy of shifting profiles or jagged bodies inmotion. This assemblage of dynamic elements expresses the significance of constituent parts to a whole, aswell as the nature of mutability and the human experience. Versus plays on perceived realities, and representsa transient world in flux.

Also on view will be several works on paper from 1998-2021. For Cragg, drawing is an essential activity,often existing autonomously from the practice of sculpture, as a daily process or the expression of a concreteidea. Drawing allows visualisation of a complex material world, or can be a step into the unknown. AsCragg says, ‘In contrast to sculpture, drawing never demands a real world scenario. Drawing steps into theworld of dreams. ’

Press release courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery