A conversation with the sculptor Tony Cragg about his works and the exhibition in Darmstadt
From April 26 to October 26, 2025, the artist shows his unique work in the Darmstadt sculpture garden, which play with material and shape in a fascinating way.
Darmstadt, April 25, 2025. The British sculptor Tony Cragg is one of the most important representatives of contemporary sculpture. Since the 1970s, he has researched the interaction of shape, material and space in his work-often with an almost organically-looking aesthetics. His sculptures can be found in museums, parks and in public space worldwide. Now his work can be seen in the sculpture garden at the Spanish tower in Darmstadt. We had a conversation with him about artistic processes, the power of form - and the question of what role matter plays in it.
Her sculptures often act like living organisms that develop in the room. Where does this formal language come from - is there a conscious source of inspiration, or do the forms develop intuitively in the work process?
I am interested in the sculpture that it allows its own relationship with the material - one that has nothing to do with practical use. In our everyday life we use materials almost exclusively functional, but the sculpture gives the material space to develop freely - without purpose and without benefits.
I do not reproduce things that already exist. Rather, I am interested in: what else can be expressed with material? What ideas and emotions can you produce? I want people to get a feeling of looking at my sculptures for the role of material in our life - how much it shapes our environment and our thinking.
We are happy to distinguish between organic form - what appears to be alive, emotionally and irregularly - and geometric order - what looks technically, rational and controlled. But in truth, these levels do not exist separately. Organic structures ultimately consist of geometric units: molecules, cells, patterns. I am interested in this connection of structure and sensation.
In our industrial world there are often simple, efficient forms: especially lines, smooth surfaces, right angles. This has led to a certain "impoverishment" of the form. The variety that we find in nature is lost. Sculpture can form an opposite pole here - it is one of the few forms of human examination of material that does not pursue an external purpose. It begins with pointlessness - and this is exactly what her freedom arises.
At no sculpture I know what it will look like from the start. It is always an open process. I don't work like a designer with a clear design, but let myself be guided by the material and its development. Often I am surprised by what arises from it. This is exactly what makes it so exciting for me.
In their current exhibition in Darmstadt, they show works in a sculpture garden. What role does the exhibition location play for your work? Do your sculptures react to the surroundings - or should the environment react to you?
In this case, the term “sculpture park” is actually misleading. It is a park, but not untouched nature. Rather, the environment itself is designed by humans: the plants, colors and paths - all of this was selected, arranged, composed. In this respect, I find it only logical that sculptures can also be accommodated there - as another "species" among the many man -made elements.
For the exhibition in Darmstadt, I thought about how to move through the room. I wanted to create a sequence, a path on which one is managed from one sculpture to the next - whereby each sculpture stands for itself, but at the same time represents a visual invitation to the next. It is about confrontation and the immediate experience of shape in the room.
For me, the park is primarily a room, a place where my work is placed. I don't see him as a partner with whom I step into a direct dialogue. I process the relationship with nature more in my studio - not in the outdoor exhibition context.
Their materials range from bronze to wood to plastic. How do you decide which material is the right one for a certain sculpture? Sometimes does the material give the shape - or vice versa?
The choice of material is not simply a technical decision in the sculpture - it is central to what the sculpture ultimately expresses. If you look at the development of the sculpture, you can see: Until the late 19th century, there were almost exclusively with materials such as bronze, marble or wood - and mostly in figurative form.
But at the latest since Duchamp it became clear: all materials, all shapes and colors have an effect - intellectual or emotional. We live in a world in which we are constantly surrounded by material impressions. Ducamp's famous pissoir was not only a provocation, but also a liberation: it showed that everyday objects can also acquire artistic importance.
Since then, the sculpture has developed into studying the entire material world. Artists work with everything today - from chocolate to DNA to meat. For me personally, it is no longer interesting to just discover a new material. This has happened many times.
What is more important is the question: What effect has a certain material - and how can I create a form that reinforces or questions this effect? Of course, the place also plays a role. In the outside space, for example, I am dependent on constant materials - bronze, steel, certain plastics.
But every material brings its own language. Steel stands for strength, stability - his name already refers to it. Bronze, on the other hand, is an ancient alloy with a low melting point - ideal for pouring fine, complex shapes. And glass? This is a world in itself: when I work with glassmakers, the material often brings its own geometry with - drops, strands, very naturally grown structures.
I am interested in exactly that: the interplay between the idea and what the material brings with it. Sometimes the shape specifies the direction - but very often it arises in dialogue with the fabric itself.
They have been dealing with the relationship between matter and form, nature and culture for decades. Has your view of these topics changed over the years?
My view of the relationship between matter and shape has changed over the years - not through sudden breaks, but rather as a flowing development. When I started making sculptures in 1969, I had no clear idea of what sculpture could be. I was simply fascinated by the effect of shapes - and wanted to experiment with new materials.
At that time I worked with plastics that were hardly considered in the art world. I collected industrial objects with simple geometries and limited colors - everything looked like a single source. This resulted in the question for me: What do these uniform mass products say about our world?
I started sorting it, stacking, combining color - and developing a growing need to create my own, complex forms. Not as a images, but as an independent structure. For example, the idea arose to reproduce the shadow of a vessel - something that is not tangible but visible.
Early Forms series was finally inspired by fossil sites at which numerous extinct animal species were discovered at the same time - a metaphor for the huge variety of shapes that existed or could give.
Later I increasingly dealt with the area of tension between geometric structure and organic form. This development was never sudden, but in logical, assembling steps.
Despite all the changes, one thing has remained the same: my amazement at the material - about chemical, physical and formal properties. This fascination has been with me for more than five decades - and it is still unbroken.
If you approach a new sculpture: does the process in your head, on paper, or directly with the material in your hand?
For me, a new sculpture does not begin with a sudden inspiration or classic inspiration - this is a term that I honestly never fully understood. Rather, a new work almost always arises from the previous one. As you work on a sculpture, you make a variety of decisions, some rather small, others in turn central - such as the question of whether a form has three or four legs.
If a work is completed, there is a kind of memory of the way there. One begins to guess: If I had decided differently in one place, something completely different would have been created - with a different form, a different meaning, another emotional quality. And it is precisely this thought that leads to the next sculpture.
You want to see what happens when you go the other way. But then you discover something new, unplanned. You land in a place that you couldn't predict. The nice thing is: there is still so much undiscovered in the world - and in art. I have the feeling that everything just starts.
