The Buchmann Galerie is pleased to present at the Buchmann Box a special exhibition with watercolors and drawings by Tony Cragg. 

Tony Cragg (b. 1949, lives and works in Wuppertal) is one of the most important sculptors of our time. The sculptures he has created are probably better known than his drawings, having won the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture in 2007. The significance of his sculptural oeuvre is beyond doubt. Yet here we have a rare opportunity to reflect on the relevance of Tony Cragg’s drawings to his oeuvre as a whole. 

Tony Cragg’s sculptures offer a perspective on the human environment that is inspired by the natural sciences, allowing it to speak for itself, as it were. “For every material, there is a catalog of specific qualities, a rich vocabulary that establishes the language of objects.”—Tony Cragg 

In contrast to the creative process for his sculpture, his drawings represent for Tony Cragg, with their dematerialized point of departure, a “search for knowledge.” The drawing, as the “inventor of a description for […] imperceptible processes,” is indispensible to his artistic project of sensitizing perception and creating consciousness. It makes thoughts visibly invisible, for example, through the use of numbers as codes, as lines … His drawings manifest a conception of reality as energy and material, access to Tony Cragg’s “dream world”—a reality partially unknown, imagined, yet demonstrable by and permeated with science. 

Drawing has always been part of Tony Cragg’s work as an artist. In the beginning of his career, he produced drawings of materials. Tony Cragg created “drawings” using objects and volumes, be they ropes in the air or outlines of bodies on the wall, as a way to use linear elements for structures and forms. Toward the end of the 1980s, he increasingly began to appreciate drawing on paper as well, and since that time he has produced many such drawings. 

A solo exhibition of Tony Cragg’s work, titled IN 4D dal fluire alla stabilità is on view at the Museo Ca’Pesaro in Venice, Italy, until January 9, 2011. 

For further information about the artist or for illustrations of the works in the exhibition, please do not hesitate to contact the gallery.