(Anthony Douglas Cragg) *
(Born in Liverpool in 1949, has lived in Wuppertal since 1977; taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf until 2013)
Subcommittee, 1991, bronze, 3/3, 206 x 140 x 135 cm

Provenance:
acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Exhibited:
Bonn, Tony Cragg - Signs of life, Bundeskunsthalle, 23 May - 5 October 2003, exh. cat. no. 276, ill. of a corten steel cast

The use of ordinary objects and actions as conveyors of important information – the acknowledgement that every object is accompanied by a wealth of associations and relationships – is vitally important. Without this understanding, a tin of soup remains a tin of soup, a fluorescent lightbulb just a lightbulb, and a chair with fat on it remains a chair with fat on it. But through this acknowledgement we discover objects that contain meaning and feeling which relate to their outward form, their metaphysical dimension, their poetry, and their genesis from or in nature.”
Tony Cragg: Ausgangspunkt, in: Tony Gragg, Signs of Life, Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH Bonn, Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag, 2003, p. 247f

Subcommittee
From his early assemblages of colourful plastic waste to the dynamic, highly polished stainless steel spirals of more recent times, Tony Cragg has created a comprehensive oeuvre, in which his fascinating aesthetic developed from the multidimensionality of the materials used. Sculptural approaches to the accumulation and arrangement of found materials predominated in his early work, but his style of working began to change from the mid-1980s. From this point on, the distortion, defamiliarisation, and surface treatment of containers or natural shapes dominated. Cragg learnt how to cast metal and broadened his spectrum to wax and plaster casts. Material as a means of expression is in the foreground of his innovative plastic compositions. The large bronze sculpture “Subcommittee” is part of a group of works created at the beginning of the 1990s. In these, Cragg varies the motif of the stamp, in different arrangements and in different materials, as a metaphor for people. The monumentalised carousel-stamp indicates the absurdity of bureaucracy. Through the amorphous shaping of the stamp-bodies and their rounded grip heads, the artist establishes a complex interplay between individualisation and differentiation on the one hand and the standardisation of industrial products and workflows on the other, between free and systematic design, and organic and geometric abstraction. It is characteristic of Cragg’s oeuvre that the work generates multiple associations and socio-political narratives, and yet to the same extent demands an aesthetic, materially-orientated perspective.