Cragg Tony, New Curly, 2001

Patinated bronze, 140 (h) x 410 (l) x 120 cm (w)

Collection Lentos Art Museum Linz, Inv. Nr. 1456

Huge and weighing in at 1,200 kilos, ” New Curly” is truly in a league of its own. Tony Cragg chooses his models from the world of fossils and archetypal animals to make such gigantic objects. Their sheer mass gives them the feel of being aliens, like some bizarre crustacean swept from the floor of the sea into the museum, where it fills all the available space. His works have the allure of found objects from a distant, but nevertheless strangely familiar civilisation, while at the same time giving the impression of having been industrially made. Cast in bronze, his ​“New Curly” skilfully negotiates the divide between nature and technology, like many of his works of plastic art that rank industrial objects next to specimens from the world of fossils. (Plastic art, sculpture -> If a work is built and modelled from soft materials, such as clay, wax, or plaster, we usually speak of ​“Plastik” in German. Metal casts, too, are commonly referred to as ​“Plastiken”. If, on the other hand, the work is sculpted from a solid material, such as wood, stone, glass, plastic, various metals and found objects, it is referred to as a sculpture.