Throughout a career that began in the 1970s, Tony Cragg has developed an approach to sculpture that defies the genre’s traditional codes. His attention focuses on manufactured objects and their sculptural properties such as shape, colour and texture. More recently, Cragg has appropriated industrial manufacturing processes to create work based on digital artifacts and distortions.
At the turn of the century, this approach culminated in the series Points of View, of which the work shown here is part. The two steel columns have been subjected to a spiral movement as though distorted by a tornado or rapid rotating movements. Contrary to the classical canon of sculpture, which advocates a single point of view from which the work is to be seen, Cragg’s sculptures can be appreciated equally from any angle. Notwithstanding their obvious abstract forms, viewers will be tempted to make out curiously human features in their polished surfaces.
