Tony Cragg - Figure out / Figure in

As a counterpoint to the presentation at the Louvre of the retrospective devoted to the Bavarian-born Austrian sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, the museum plays host to a group of sculptures by the leading British contemporary artist Tony Cragg, to be shown in the Cour Marly and the Cour Puget.

In addition, the Louvre is pleased to feature a monumental sculpture by the artist, produced especially for the exhibition and displayed under the pyramid.

The visual dialogue across the centuries between Tony Cragg and Messerschmidt's "character heads" is limited to a single bronze sculpture by this major contemporary sculptor, Untitled (2010) which, like the masterspieces of his 18th-century predecessor, through its distortions and superimposed layers, depicts a particularly expressive human face, from a very specific viewpoint.

The seven other sculptures selected by Cragg to inhabit the space formed by the Cour Marly and the Cour Puget are of varying dimensions, shapes and types, thus reflecting this sculptor's broad use of materials (bronze, marble, fiberglass, wood), colors (white, red, black) and methods (circumvolutions around a central axis, displacement of oblique and overhanging elements along a lateral plane, accumulation of numerous fine layers, puncturing of surfaces). Sculptures conceived on the same themes, but of different sizes, allow visitors to consider the question of scale, and a sculpture in two parts, Runner, resonates with a number of works in the Louvre's collections.

Tony Cragg
Figure out / Figure in
Kurator: Marie-Laure Bernadac