advent calendar 2016 - part 4 (19 - 24 December)

The final entries of our advent calendar series have the following artists and works featured -

Day 19: Now Gallery recommends 'Bullet From A Shooting Star' based at Greenwich Peninsula by artist Alex Chinneck, who time and time again shows that nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it. @alexchinneck creates inventive pieces of art using the familiar & transforming it into the unique. Don’t miss his melting Christmas Tree on display at Granary Square during this festive period. 

Day 20: Welsh artist Bedwyr Williams brings @barbicancentre Curve gallery to life with his quest into The Gulch. The curious & often subversive internal dialogue @bedwyr_williams plays out along the Curve’s space in this fantastical installation. Physical & metaphorical twists & turns guide you through the gallery and ultimately inspire you to give your own performance, one that will fill the cavernous gorge of the gulch for those following in your footsteps.

Day 21: close up of Anselm Kiefer's nuber pluant ustem (2016) currently on display in @whitecubeofficial bermondsey. Kiefer employs a range of media – oil, acrylic, emulsion and shellac - to emphasise the space of painting as a threshold into a mythic, imaginative realm.

Day 22: @GRAD_London recommends 'Destined To Be Happy', Russian artist Irina Korina's new solo installation which runs until 28 February 2017. Experience the macabre reality of Korina’s greyscale domain, punctuated with characters whose emotional relatability is laid bare for scrutiny.

Day 23: Berlin-based artist @AlicjaKwade ’s commission in @whitechapelgallery "Medium Median" explores our relationship to space and time through technology, culture and senses.

Day 24: Spring (2015) by Tony Cragg shown previously in @lisson_gallery. His axiom “There are many more things that do not exist than things that do exist” points to a deep well of things & 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 man who makes amazing sculptures like twisters frozen in time

Tony Cragg

Lisson Gallery
till 17.04.2010
 

Tony Cragg's first solo show was held by the same gallery where his latest solo show is opened, but that was over 30 years ago back in 1979.
 
Turning 61 this year, his sculptures clearly show no sign of slowing down with their dynamic forms. Born in Liverpool, he may have inherit some sort of Beatles vibe in his blood that makes all these swinging form so alive even they are made by the most solid materials you could use for art: Timber, Steel, Marble, Bronze... and reading from the list provided by the gallery, each of them weighs from 100kg (the lightest one is made by Fiberglass) to 3200 kg(!)
 
As the title of this review said, these sculptures are so dynamic they are like twisters captured in a snap shot. You can sense the movement and momentum of the components when you walk around each piece -
 
Works displayed in the Ground Floor Main Gallery (video link)
 
Works displayed in the Courtyard (video link)
 
Interview of Tony Cragg by ArtLyst1
 
Signature & Factory stamp on WT (Inverted Columns stainless), 2009

Full photo set here

The pieces all look so unstable, uncertain - yet poetic, beautiful. Tony captures the Zeitgeist of our times in preserved it in eternity in his wonderful works. Catch the show before it closes in the coming weekend. 

*****
 
Further readings -
Tony Cragg's personal page at Lisson Gallery
Tony Cragg's personal page at the Royal Academy of Arts
Review by Richard Cork for Financial Times, 23.03.2010
Sculptor Tony Cragg at the Lisson Gallery - video by the Telegraph's Culture Video