Tony Cragg: Sculptural Landscape Solo exhibition at Pilane

By Joanna Persman

In summer 2026, a generous selection of eleven sculptures by the British/German artist Tony Cragg can be seen at Pilane. The sculpture Pool, already a permanent feature in the sculpture park, will be joined by other works that Cragg has made over the last few years.

The rich and unpredictable quality of Tony Cragg’s aesthetic ideas is as astounding as the diversity of nature itself. And nature has been a constant source of inspiration for Cragg, who as a boy spend memorable years on his grandfather’s farm in southern England. The organic and the geometrical merge seamlessly in his evocative works.

Since the beginnings of his work in the early 1969, Tony Cragg has been on a ceaseless quest for new possibilities. His artistic urge is expressed in sculptural experiments with bronze, stone, wood, plastic, fibreglass, and other materials. It’s all about form, the essence of these materials, and surface treatment. His creative practice starts with a hint of something that wants to be conceived but does not yet know how. Here, the artistic process is one of patient listening. A forward movement that is both intuitive and consistently logical. The shapes do not evolve towards a representation of something that already exists, but develop to end ultimately in unplanned and unpredictable new forms. The creative urge does not act in opposition to common sense but follows its own strict logic, as if the decisions lay hidden in the material. Thus, Cragg’s art is born from inner structures. Sometimes out of a geometric figure and sometimes out of a more nebulous form, an inner pressure or a displacement. His sculptures deliver a response rather than a statement. As if the artist were discovering shapes that as yet have no defined language.