Tony Cragg Masks, 2023

Tony Cragg’s Masks (2023) was created by layering plywood made from bog oak, which was manufactured especially for the artist who generally prefers man-made or natural materials that show distinct traces of their processing for his work. The sculpture is composed of two distinct forms that are pressed into each other, creating in their consolidation a ‘new feeling, a new category of things,’ as the artist explains. The wood shows horizontal linear patterning on the surface, a result of the high-compression production process, connoting movement, change and the transience of elements caught in the process of transformation. ‘The layers are a bit like time, a little bit like geology,’ says Cragg. Heads and faces recur in Cragg’s work, and the circular shape of Masks hints at a human form. However, on closer inspection it morphs back into abstraction. Cragg’s primary interest in making sculpture has never been to copy nature or to represent something that already exists in the world but rather to discover the ideas and emotions that different materials and forms can evoke.