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The Arts Intel Report

Houseago, Rodin

Sept 9 – Dec 18, 2021
6–24 Britannia Street London WC1X 9JD

“There is in Rodin a very pagan concern for the life-death continuum: clay as a manifestation of life and death,” the British artist Thomas Houseago has explained. “It is a way of reminding us about the complexity of being in a body, of being alive.” The human body is a central motif in Houseago’s sculpture, too. He uses classical materials—carved wood, plaster, clay, and bronze, as well as rebar and hemp—to create anthropomorphic figures in which two-dimensional elements are worked into a three-dimensional shape. This exhibition places the two artists’ works in bronze side by side. Houseago’s Gold Walking Man and the smaller Rock Demons, both made in 2021, meet Rodin’s Bourgeois de Calais, The Tragic Muse, and other masterpieces. —E.C.

Thomas Houseago, “Owl Demon,” 2021 © Thomas Houseago. Photo: Stefan Altenburger.