Tony Cragg: Sculptures and Drawings

After a frenetic few days of installation and hours of tweaking positions (a 'ballet', as Tony likes to put it), the exhibition Tony Cragg: Sculptures and Drawings opened at CAFA Museum. It looks fabulous - the cavernous white space & curved lines of the galleries providing the perfect context for Tony's large, colourful and bewildering forms. Good, well-attended press conference, long but warm-hearted opening ceremony and similarly long artist's talk which ended up being a kind of history of 20th century art. Really nice friendly, informal atmosphere thoughout the day...

...which carried through to the dinner at a charming Chinese restaurant near 798. There were 30 of us: curators, technicians and a few artists, including Liu Xiaodong (see 8 Jan 2011 post) who was very funny, very charming and very nice - and still reminds me of Dustin Hoffman. Phoned Patrick on the mobile and passed him around to Tony and co in between courses - nice to have him join us virtually. It was P who came up with the idea in the first place. Afterwards a few of us, including Xiaodong, went on to the Mesh bar in Sanlitun where we met up with the French curator Jerome Sans (who is the spitting image of David Lynch), Greg Hilty of Lisson Gallery and others. Great ending to a great day.