Tony Cragg

Lisson Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new work by Tony Cragg, centred on the latest in his series of Incident sculptures, alongside recent pieces from related, ongoing bodies of work.

The show revolves around numerous upright forms that resemble standing figures or columnar pillars, but which are abstracted and complicated through Cragg’s rigorous process of hand carving – whether through the act of building up and constructing or through careful erosion and hollowing out. The porosity and openness of these new Incident works collapse any boundaries between internal and external structure, between solid and air, creating sculptural moments that are at once transitory and eternal, organic and deliberate. A further dimension to these animated and gestural configurations – which seem to dance and commune with one another as though being drawn in space – is their hard-edged materiality, being variously manufactured from patinated bronze, reflective stainless steel or the velveteen surface of weathered corten steel.

For over 50 years, Cragg has fostered a practice combining his interests in the natural and the manmade worlds that has nevertheless remained resolutely a product of his own invention, experimentation and imagination.