Since its kickoff last year Chengdu's Museum of Contemporary Art has already taken the lead in Chengdu's steadily growing art gallery landscape, with a unique Picasso exhibition and 100 Years Vintage Prints: Charles Jin photo collection exhibition, to name just the two most recent exhibitions. Curator Lu Peng's hunger for excellent exhibitions seems to be still unsatisfied, and with the help of the British Council, he's reached out (and nabbed) a showing by one of the United Kingdom's most acclaimed contemporary artists: Tony Cragg website.

Turner prize winner Cragg was the first living artist to exhibit in the Louvre and for the past 30 years has been residing in Germany where he created a sculpture park (near Wuppertal) and directs the Art Academy Düsseldorf. The former lab technician who calls himself an "absolute materialist" insists on getting hands-on with his sculptures, which are formed out of a smorgasbord of materials: bronze, steel, kevlar, and plastic trash. His love for material shows through in his sculptures, which appear at once smoothly organic and aesthetically timeless.

This flagship event of UK Now, a series of UK arts and creative-industry events in a dozen cities in China leading up to the Olympic Games in London, previously stopped in Beijng after a successful kickoff in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. For this in-depth solo show, Cragg has handpicked 49 sculptures and 127 drawings from his last two decades of work. They will be scattered inside and outside the museum. The artist is expected to open the exhibition personally and give a master class. A show certainly not to be missed, and the best part is it's free.

Tony Cragg: sculptures and drawings
July 7 through August 15, Tuesday through Sunday, 10 to 5:30. Free entrance. MoCA: Chengdu Museum of Contemporary Art

Photos courtesy of British Council

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