Marian Goodman Gallery, along with NYC Parks and the Fund for Park Avenue, is delighted to present a display of new sculptures by Tony Cragg on the Park Avenue Malls. Monumental Sculptures will be on view through the end of October. The presentation includes recent sculptures in stainless steel, bronze and fiberglass.

Tony Cragg is one of the most well-known and innovative sculptors working today. For forty years he has investigated the materiality of sculpture, searching for innovative ways to express and engage with new ideas. Cragg has a keen awareness of the boundless capacity of materials which enables his exploration of subject matter and imagery.

Five towering sculptures, located along Park Avenue between 52nd streets and 79th streets, play with perception and gravity, imposing their intense and dynamic shapes onto the city. The sculptural forms of Mean Average, Runner, Tommy, Hammerhead and Elliptical Column all extend and soar from an axis, compounding elliptical columns to create a form of symmetry. Like organisms, they evolve and transform, creating meaning in their environments.

Tony Cragg's Monumental Sculptures can be seen in the following locations through October 31, 2018:

Mean Average, 2013, Park Avenue at East 52nd Street

Elliptical Column, 2012, Park Avenue at East 57th Street

Runner (gebogen), 2017, Park Avenue at East 67th Street

Hammerhead, 2017, Park Avenue at East 72nd Street

Tommy, 2013, Park Avenue at East 79th Street

Cragg’s interest in material forms was informed by his experience as a laboratory assistant in 1966 at the National Rubber Producers’ Research Association in Hertfordshire. There, he was involved in experiments that compelled him to investigate the properties of matter, which opened his eyes to the possibilities of combining natural and synthetic elements – a new approach to sculpture. Cragg’s core skills as an artist came from his attendance at Gloucestershire College of Art in Cheltenham, where he studied drawing, painting, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture, and from his continued studies at Wimbledon College of Art and the Royal College of Art, where he received his Masters in Sculpture.

Tony Cragg was born in Liverpool, England, and has lived and worked in Wuppertal, Germany, since 1977. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Barnett Newman Foundation Award in 2016; the Rheinischer Kulturpreis, Sparkassen Kulturstiftung, 2013; the Cologne Fine Art Award in 2012; the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Award, Tokyo in 2007; and the winner in 1988 of the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery, London. He served as Director of the Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf, after having been a Professor there since 1988. He was awarded the Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, (CBE) in 2003, is a recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and was given a knighthood for his life’s work in 2016.

During the past few years, there have been several important solo exhibitions of Cragg’s work worldwide: Tony Cragg: Roots & Stones at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (fall 2017-winter 2018); Tony Cragg: Roots & Stones at the Isfahan Museum of Art (February – April 2018); Tony Cragg , MUDAM Luxembourg (2017); Tony Cragg: A Rare Category of Objects , Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2017); Tony Cragg , Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba (2017); Tony Cragg: Retrospektive at the Von der Heydt, Wuppertal, Germany (2016); Tony Cragg: Sculptures and Drawings at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2016); Tony Cragg at the Benaki Museum, Athens (2015); Walks of Life at Madison Square Park, New York (2014); Tony Cragg at the Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan (2014); Tony Cragg at the Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2013); Tony Cragg: Sculptures and Drawings at CAFA Art Museum, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (2012); Tony Cragg: Seeing Things at The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2011); Tony Cragg: Sculptures and Drawings at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2011); and Figure In / Figure Out at the Musée du Louvre, Paris (2011).

Currently there are two solo exhibitions of Cragg’s work, one of which originated in Iran at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and is now on view at the Sanati Contemporary Arts Museum, and another at the Istanbul Modern (both on view through November 2018.)

For over 50 years, NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program has brought contemporary public artworks to the city’s parks, making New York City one of the world’s largest open-air galleries. The agency has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, NYC Parks has collaborated with arts organizations and artists to produce over 2,000 public artworks by 1,300 notable and emerging artists in over 200 parks. For more information about the program visit www.nyc.gov/parks/art.

The Fund for Park Avenue relies solely on contributions from the community to plant, light and maintain the trees and flowers on the Park Avenue Malls. The Fund’s Sculpture Advisory Committee was formed in 2000 to recommend artwork for temporary display on the Park Avenue Malls. For more information, please visit fundforparkavenue.org.

For further information on Tony Cragg, please visit our website: www.mariangoodman.com or contact Linda Pellegrini, Director of Communications at: 212 977 7160.

For further information on NYC Parks, please contact Maeri Ferguson, Press Officer at: pressoffice@parks.ny.gov or (212) 360-1311.