Twisting from its core, Tony Cragg’s poetic Black Diabas is a pivotal sculpture belonging to the species that the artist refers to as his Rational Beings. This monumental series originating from the 1990s, is a group of organic abstract forms which evolve from drawings and are executed in a range of materials. The kinetic whirling forms of Black Diabas transgress multiple dimensions and challenge the limits of physical space. Articulated columns, combine the organic with the dynamic; profiles emerge and disappear, confronting the question of how man interacts with his surroundings. Suggestive of human form and the geometries within it, the Black Diabas is biotoc, reflecting the human cells, molecules and bone structures, which for the artist ‘will always be a preoccupation’ (Tony Cragg, ‘The Articulated Column Continued’, Tony Cragg: In and Out of Material, Cologne, 2006, pp. 23-4). Like an alchemist, Cragg breathes life into the form, his visual language transmuting static matter into animated shapes.