Dining Motions

Tony Cragg, one of the most prolific British sculptors, has produced highly diverse artwork since the beginning of his artistic career. Following his studies and his move to Wuppertal in Germany, he initially produced numerous “drawings” (as he himself puts it) forming silhouettes of people or objects from colored fragments of plastic material. Following this series, Cragg produced, among other artworks, Dining Motions (1982), in which he assembled elements of flat detritus in an apparently random manner. From the pell-mell of elements emerges a barely recognizable scene: a fork, a sausage, a knife blade... as suggested by the title. This artwork is on the threshold between assembling found objects and painting (the result of which is a wall relief) and is located in a certain Neo-Dadaist tradition. Here are to be found& characteristic elements of Cragg’s artwork such as the quest for a “path between the surreal and the metaphysical”, to quote Germano Celant. This quest translates itself into the putting into relationship of accidental shapes and the animation of the inert material through artistic intervention. Thus, the assembled artwork is greater than the sum of its parts.