Istanbul Modern's temporary space in Beyoğlu district opened recently with an exhibition of the works of Anthony Cragg, one of the most original and innovative artists in contemporary sculpture, titled "Human Nature," to be on show until Nov. 11.
Curated by Istanbul Modern Director General Levent Çalıkoğlu, "Human Nature" integrates Cragg's experiments in sculpture since the 1980s into a comprehensive and chronological whole.
The exhibition showcases Cragg's wall reliefs, which are among the artist's early works, as well as examples from his "Early Forms" and "Rational Beings" series, in which he experimented with a variety of materials and techniques over the years. Visitors can also see drawings, which Cragg describes as part of his production process, and works in which he brings different contexts to the material and that reflect tendencies closely associated with his work.
In the press meeting held on Tuesday for the opening of the temporary building and its first exhibition, Istanbul Modern Director Levent Çalıkoğlu offered some remarks on the veteran artist.
"Each period of Anthony Cragg's more than 40-year career was shaped by new ideas and conceptual insights that he brought to his sculpture, and his productions have attracted the curiosity and interest of every generation. While contemporary art was searching for new forms of expression through interdisciplinary transformations, Cragg combined the inherent aspects of sculpture, such as mass, negative space, material, and scale, with ideas and concepts that were current at the time. He established his own distinctive world of images and forms, which, by making reference to sculpture's historical past, extended from existing ready-made objects to sculptures with unique three-dimensional volume," he said.
A SCULPTOR PASSIONATE ABOUT SCIENCES
Anthony Cragg, whose works are found in leading museum and institution collections around the world, was born in 1949 in Liverpool, where his father was an engineer in the aircraft industry. Starting in 1966, the artist worked for two years as a lab technician in the National Rubber Producers Research Association and was thus introduced to science before attending art school. To this day, Cragg's studio contains publications on paleontology and biochemistry rather than books about art. He believes that sculpture, science and the worlds of physics and metaphysics complement one another and encourage thinking.
After working as a lab technician, he enrolled in a foundation course at Gloucester College of Art and Design in Cheltenham, then a three-year undergraduate course at Wimbledon School of Art, where he was a student from 1969 to 1973.
In 1973, Anthony Cragg was admitted to the postgraduate program in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. In his sculptural works at school, he used "everyday" materials that he came across in building sites, as well as materials he collected while riding solo around London on his tandem bike. According to the artist, his student years were spent searching for content that challenged the minimalist tendencies dominating the world of sculpture in the 1970s. This would lead him to develop an approach that focuses on form. In 1977, Cragg moved to Germany, where he still lives today, to start a part-time teaching job at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Soon after, he was appointed to a full-time position, accepting the post of professor from 1988 to 2001. Between 2001 and 2006, Cragg worked at the Berlin University of the Arts, then returned to Düsseldorf in 2006, where he served as the academy's president from 2009 to 2013. The artist has received numerous honorary titles and memberships from esteemed institutions around the world and had his work exhibited in countless cities since the 1970s. In 1988, Anthony Cragg was awarded the Turner Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the UK, and that year also represented his country at the Venice Biennale. In 2007, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture. Through the exhibitions he holds in many different locations around the world, the artist opens up new horizons for sculpture.
THE COMPREHENSIVE CATALOG
Published bilingually in Turkish and English, includes images of the works featured in the exhibition "Human Nature" alongside an essay by Levent Çalıkoğlu presenting the conceptual framework of the exhibition, as well as an interview of Anthony Cragg by writer Jon Wood and an essay on Cragg's artistic practice authored by Demosthenes Davvetas, a poet, artist, and professor of philosophy of art in Paris.
WORKSHOPS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Istanbul Modern Education and Social Projects department is organizing art workshops for children and young people as part of educational programs designed for different age groups. Throughout the course of the exhibition, events and film programs will also be held in conjunction with the exhibition.
