About the Work
The sculptor Tony Cragg collected the finds for his early floor and wall works on the shores of the sea. "Spectrum" feeds on plastic waste from everyday objects that blend into a modernist colour field. From a bottle opener, a kitchen sieve, a crushed can, a plastic flower, a broken parking disc and countless other industrially produced plastic parts, Cragg composes an abstract floor image that at the same time directs our attention to the visual potential of the objects. He selects the found objects according to their colourfulness and arranges the individual elements into a rainbow: a carpet out of rubbish from our disposable society. The artist removes the forgotten artefact from the homogeneous mass of the waste and gives the "found object" (from the French "objet trouvé") a new value. He gives the waste product back its sign status in order to generate a process of reflection on man's artificial − and artistic − legacies.
