How Much Does Your Mind Weigh: Richard Deacon

On Friday, March 23, 2007, Galerie Thomas Schulte presents in its Leipziger Straße corner room How Much Does Your Mind Weigh, a major, large-format work by the British sculptor Richard Deacon. The preview will take place from 7 to 9 pm the artist will be in attendance.

Richard Deacon, born in 1949 in Bangor, Wales, lives and works in London. He is one of the most important sculptors of his generation, consistently inventive in his work. The 1987 winner of the Turner Prize, his work has been presented in numerous individual exhibitions in Europe, America, and Aisa, and the sculptor has also participated in many group exhibitions such as the Carnegie International, Münster's Skulpturen Projekten, and Documenta. His works can also be found around the world in the most important museums, including Tate Gallery (London), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Centro Reina Sofia (Madrid), MoMA (New York), and Hirshhorn Museum (Washington).

Richard Deacon's sculptures capture our attention as complex lineaments, rhythmic webs or biomorphous spatial bodies. In so doing, they animate us to engage in intense perception of their characteristic saturation of form, surface, and space. Depending on the location, the insights, perspectives, and views provided allow the "empty space" around the sculpture to come to the forefront as immaterial form, equal in status to the material.

For many years, Deacon has been exploring the possibilities of innovation in "traditional" sculpture. In addition to numerous aspects relating to sculpture's material and surface, aesthetic intermediate zones like transparency and semi-transparency as well as conceptually combinatorial approaches have become very important in his work. Both come to bear in his large sculpture How Much Does Your Mind Weigh. The work consists of several basic forms, wood elements shaped under heat. Deacon thus makes his sculpture in its construction as plausible as a poet uses words made of letters or a musician who creates a composition using just few tones. Deacon's ingenious achievement is to create highly complex bodies and varied spatial relations with these simple building blocks.