Bent of Mind by Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg was born in Liverpool in 1949. He worked as a laboratory technician at the Natural Rubber Producers Research Association (1966-68) before attending Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, Cheltenham College, and the Royal College of Art, London (1973-77). Tony Cragg has lived and worked in Wuppertal, Germany, since 1977.

Bent of Mind wrestles with, as Cragg puts it, "man's relationship with his environment" and operates as a complex, three-way conversation between "material, object and image (providing) seemingly endless possibilities of form and meaning." The sculpture seems to be in the process of metamorphosis, as if changing from one form into another, thus confronting the broader idea of evolution itself. Cragg has always believed that making and viewing sculpture offers essential ways of knowing and understanding. Before turning to art, Cragg worked as a technician in a biochemistry laboratory, the Natural Rubber Producers Research Association. His scientific and technological background informs his work to this day. Just like Quantum physics, Bent of Mind addresses the continuous state of flux in which all matter exists. Not just the passage of time and changes associated with it but, perhaps, also our physical construction itself. As atoms, bound by energy, hang together in space, their very core containing it, what appears solid is actually not.
The biomorphic profile of Bent of Mind alters continually as the onlooker moves around it, drawing the eye to its extremities as one attempts to make sense of the shifting and distorted forms. "Scale lends Cragg's objects a stable monumentality, yet the surfaces of works like Bent of Mind writhe with a mass of subtly hidden human profiles" . Moving around the piece, an outstretched neck evaporates into a rounded chin, which in turn dissipates into an unfamiliar contour that, in an instant, reveals itself to be a pursed lip or bulging forehead. Like a giant in a high-speed gurning competition, Cragg maps a multitude of human facial possibilities through his depiction of movement. This could even be a monument to the instability of emotion in the uncertain and fast-paced modern world. Contours pulling in opposing directions create tensions throughout, while the smooth, undulating bronze radiates with bold highlights and dark shadows. The highly polished surface enhances the striking presence of the fluid form as the interplay of natural light creates new emphasis on previously unnoticed patterns, textures and curves.