Richard Deacon is one of those highly frustrating, hit and miss artists. He became famous in the 1980s for his vast, building-sized, rather bombastic, steely structures. He works with the opposing qualities of an apparently unyielding hard material, shaped into soft curving, often anatomical forms, but the work lurches between a successful realisation of the paradox of the inanimate soulless substance becoming a sensuous wriggling breathing sculpture, and a vacuous rendition of sculptural public-art platitudes. His work with ceramic materials sets the surface qualities against the rigid structure of the overall form. Range, his most recent exhibition at London's Lisson Gallery, was predominantly ceramic work, with one steel sculpture and a small selection of works on paper. Vincent, 2005, is a sharp, angular, rigid form disporting a gorgeous spongey, sparkly, blackish-bronze glaze: the cold, frigid shape inhabits a warm inviting, sensuous surface you can almost smell. This is Deacon at his best. This particularly well-curated room included all the paper works, doodly ink line drawings exposed through cut digital prints of darkening fuzzy landscapes; again something vacuous, seen though something deeply alive and slightly threatening.
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