ART-PRESENTATION: Richard Deacon-Flat Earth

In a career spanning more than 40 years, Richard Deacon has employed an extraordinary diversity of media in his work. He works on both domestic and large scales, combining organic forms with elements of engineering. His continuously changing methods of construction are a result of developments in his sculptural approach, reflected by his use of sinuous bent wood, contorted steel and highly glazed ceramics.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lisson Gallery Archive

A selection of Richard’s Deacon recent ceramic and wooden works are combined for his first exhibition at Lisson Gallery in Milan in the exhibition “Flat Earth”. On view in the exhibition are flat ceramic sculptures, positioned horizontally on the ground. They represent the artist’s new approach towards this medium, that has become a part of his practice in the mid-‘90s. It appears that they came to be quite casually, as the works were initially gonna serve as a support for a sculpture on top, but the artist saw them as individual pieces, ready to become artworks of their own, and their flatness was simply too inviting. And so, Richard Deacon covered it with powder and paint, creating intriguing formations that evoke shifting topographies, constellations and biological formations; as if an abstract painting was made on a ceramic support and was meant to look upon from high above, recalling aerial views of the earth, like a map made of mineral-rich colors. Deacon wrote that the works were an “Accidental result of trying to make some bases and then thinking that they looked stupid with sculpture on top. I was left with this interesting, flat surface to deal with – one of the first fired badly, so we ground it down, suddenly becoming like a terrazzo floor, and I had an ‘aha moment’. Some of the colour was applied as paint, the rest as powder”.  Accompanying the ceramics are new wooden works, their sinewy forms the result of an intricate process whereby the wood, a bundle of twenty-five wooden sticks, is first steamed and twisted, then elements of the bundle are selectively removed and the remainder fixed together. The resulting series of twisting profiles are satisfyingly simple and complex.

Info: Lisson Gallery, Via Zenale 3, Milan, Duration: 17/3-29/4/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-13:00 & 15:00-18:00, www.lissongallery.com