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Richard Deacon is a British sculptor who works with wood and metals primarily, but also uses plastics, fiberglass, and ceramics. His work has a similar style to that of Martin Puryear. All of the images I am posting are from his website.

He works with the bent lamination technique on a typically large scale. Here is a shot that is not from his site, but just shows the process of bending the wood. The wood is bent along the grain. Typically, several rip-cut strips are laid one atop the other and clamped into a jig that forces the wood into a particular shape.

This piece on the left is made out of galvanized steel and concrete, but the style and joinery of materials is treated similarly to wood joinery. You can see the finger or dovetail-like joints around the larger opening. Although the materials differ, he seems to conform them into a similar expression.


He says his work is not about technique. It is more about the ability to form materials, seemingly contrary to their nature. It is a primal act of manipulating the materials around us. Technique is of course inherent in the extent of his manipulation, but is not what he would say is the essence of it.

But look at this crazy thing.

It is hard to look at this thing and not be overwhelmed with the question, "How the hell did he do that?" I would imagine that even to the expert who knows how he made it, the detail and complexity seems to be the emphasis of this piece. To me, it seems to be all about technique. I go back and forth on how necessary titles are. His titles vary from very sterile to sort of emotional, while the aesthetic pretty much remains constant.

It is hard to separate him from Martin Puryear. Not only in the similar methods/style of working, but they are both craftsmen and artists. There work represents them as both. Some work is craft, some work is art. They seem to strattle the two realms rather successfully. Here is another really crazy awesome piece that had some fabrication shots on the website. These are detail shots of the craziness. You can see the braces he uses to keep it together. Now for the really cool part. Check out these elaborate set ups. This guys is really prolific too. If you check out his website, it goes back to the 1980s. He has so much work.

Richard Deacon is known for using "construction and building fabrication techniques" in his art. Overall, he seems just as concerned with the materials he uses as he is with the meaning of his work. Born in Wales, in 1949, Deacon was a well-known, promising young sculptor in the 1970s and is now one of the most famous British sculptors of his generation.

Deacon uses a wide variety of materials, from wood to polycarbonate and leather to ceramics, but for the sake of this class, I will consider one of his wood sculptures.

Quick, 2009. Chêne et acier. 180 × 622 × 231 cm. Strasbourg, Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain. Photo : Ken Adlard

Steel joints brace this piece entitled "Quick," allowing the wood to move in ways that might not happen naturally. "Organic …. and engineered," this piece makes an indirect connection between manufactured objects and biological forms because its a little bit of both at several levels (movement, materials, techniques, etc.). More specifically, Deacon explores how material and construction techniques interact to delve into dualities of meaning at a subjective level. He says a lot about the modern world through the relationships at play in his work.

You can see his techniques and materials very clearly so that his process becomes part of the meaning of his pieces:

His sculptures never seek to hide technical operations behind them, including assemblage, riveting, torsion, stretching, folding or strapping…

His process starts with drawing but it always moves into industry fabrication. In the piece above, the wood was "steam(ed), then clamped and strapped onto metal and assembled using a system of metal fixtures."

Deacons sculptures relates to furniture-making in that they interact with the space around them and they usually interact with a lot of tension:

...beholders clearly sense themselves in the force field between the sculpture and the surrounding space, and walking around the object search for views inside or through the object and the inner spaces enclosed by the sculpture as immaterial shapes, and for an immanent principle of order.

More dualities that are cited about Deacon’s sculptures include "the struggle between chaos and order [and the struggle] between formlessness and rigorous structure."

I think its amazing how much can be said once techniques are mastered and then all mashed up with a variety of materials. It is inspiring to learn about someone who constantly explores his options in order to get exactly what he wants.