Richard Deacon embraces failure in Antwerp with stellar results
Richard Deacon’s first outdoor sculpture show, which opens this weekend in Antwerp, is long overdue. It’s been 30 years since the artist, one of the leading British sculptors of his generation, won the Turner Prize. But the circumstances of this show are somewhat novel, since it has its origins in a bold admission of failure.
In 1993 the Middelheim Museum, a wonderful city-based sculpture park with a historic collection ranging from Rodin to Ai Weiwei, bought one of Deacon’s biggest and most ambitious works. Never Mind was a beautiful giant balloon-like structure crafted out wood. Defying its weighty material properties, it appeared to expand outward and float over the earth like a ghost ship.
The sculpture decayed unexpectedly quickly, and the museum locked it out of site. ‘Nobody wanted to talk about it,’ says Middelheim Museum director Sara Weyns. However, the sad story of Never Mind became for Weyns a very important one. She began to see it as a brilliant way to address a bigger question that the contemporary art world is now facing: that of the unknowablity of the future of contemporary art. How will it survive and live on, given the new, untested materials and techniques that so many use?
Deacon’s answer has been to recreate the piece in stainless steel. A new work altogether, it lives on defiant, robust, purpose-built for the future – even futuristic in a spaceship kind of way.
What the exhibition stands for, with Never Mind at its heart, is not the sad ephemerality of beauty, but the pioneering human drive to improve, recreate, and adapt. And perhaps more importantly for Deacon, it highlights the risk his practice takes.
When talking about his work, it’s his willingness to embrace failure that gets him excited. ‘I love glazing clay,’ he says. ‘It’s the only way I like to paint, because you don’t have any idea what it’s going to look like. That’s extremely liberating.’
As one walks around the grounds of Middelheim, Deacon’s streak of risk becomes apparent in everything he does. It’s essential – because he wants to make the material perform in uncharacteristic, surprising ways.
Giant, fragile columns of ceramics have been assembled as if in free-fall, arranged in an off-balance way. Planks of wood have been twisted into ribbons that create a delicate cradle filled with light. They seem elastic – until you see how firmly fixed they are with metal framework at the sides.
‘Fluidity and fixedness are two sides of a rather interesting divide,’ says Deacon, ‘like being alive or dead.’ A love of risk must be united with a grounded respect for nuts and bolts realities of technique and process – as well as a true artist’s willingness to get it wrong.
INFORMATION
‘Richard Deacon: Some Time’ runs from 27 May – 24 September. For more information, visit the Middleheim Museum website
ADDRESS
Middelheimlaan 61
2020 Antwerp
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
-
Sir Kenneth Grange’s influential industrial designs are chronicled in a new book
‘Kenneth Grange: Designing the Modern World’ explores the life and work of the pioneering British industrial designer
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Chin, chin! Asprey’s new Peninsula London boutique raises the bar
Asprey barware designs from the house’s joyful, jazz-era back catalogue are available at its new boutique in The Peninsula, London
By Caragh McKay Published
-
Step inside Precious Okoyomon’s post-apocalyptic forest in Madrid
In Madrid, Precious Okoyomon and Hans Ulrich Obrist reconvene for Obrist’s annual site-specific curation for Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
By Will Jennings Published
-
Peter Blake’s sculptures spark joy at Waddington Custot in London
‘Peter Blake: Sculpture and Other Matters’, at London's Waddington Custot, spans six decades of the artist's career
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Oozing, squidgy, erupting forms come alive at Hayward Gallery
‘When Forms Come Alive: Sixty Years of Restless Sculpture’ at Hayward Gallery, London, is a group show full of twists and turns
By Hannah Silver Published
-
New glass sculpture creates a verdant wonderland at Apple’s Cupertino HQ
‘Mirage’ at Apple Park is the work of Zeller & Moye and artist Katie Paterson, a shimmering array of glass columns that snakes through the grounds of the company’s monumental HQ
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Man Ray’s sculptures go on show in New York
‘Man Ray: Other Objects’ opens at Luxembourg + Co, New York, revealing their author’s ‘artistic revolution’
By Hannah Silver Published
-
The best London art exhibitions to see now
Your guide to the best London art exhibitions, as chosen by the Wallpaper* arts desk
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Erwin Wurm’s pop-coloured fantasy land at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
In Erwin Wurm’s first UK museum show, ‘Trap of the Truth’, the artist transforms Yorkshire Sculpture Park into a slightly warped wonderland (10 June 2023 – 28 April 2024)
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro transforms Fendi’s Rome HQ into a theatre of myth and magic
Fendi’s Roman HQ sets the scene for ‘Il Grande Teatro delle Civiltà’ a major show by Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro, who has also created a one-off edition of the house’s iconic Peekaboo bag. Read more in the July 2023 Issue of Wallpaper*, on newsstands 8 June
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith Published
-
Superflex on building an underwater city for fish: ‘there are different rules down there’
Danish art collective Superflex discuss their ambitious Super Reef, an underwater urbanisation project aiming to restore more than 55 square kilometres of stone reef in Danish seas
By Alice Godwin Published