Tony Cragg's first retrospective in Denmark opens this February
10 January 2022
From 26 February to 22 August 2022, the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art (HEART) will present 'Tony Cragg: Made on Earth', the artist's first retrospective exhibition in Denmark. The exhibition spans Cragg’s entire oeuvre from his 1970s black-and-white photographs and rough sculptures, to the colourful 1980s works that gave him his breakthrough and the virtuoso sculptures created in recent years.
Tony Cragg understands sculpture as a study of how material and material forms affect and form our ideas and emotions. Constantly pushing to find new relations between people and the material world, there is no limit to the materials he might use, as there are no limits to the ideas or forms he might conceive. There is no overt critique of consumer culture in his choice of materials; rather, they may signify a certain acceptance of their existence, properties and even beauty. In this sense, Cragg’s insistent awareness of his chosen materials point back to key works in the HEART collection, including those by Piero Manzoni and the Arte Povera movement, who in their own ways worked with residual and waste materials.
In addition to the exhibition at HEART, a number of monumental recent sculptures are currently exhibited outdoors in various locations in central Herning. Here observers will find a poetic idiom that not only reflects the artist’s personality, but that resonates with each viewer’s own personality and experiences, their size and materials actively intervene in the city’s everyday life.
Find further information via HEART.
Image © Tony Cragg, courtesy HEART Museum.
