Conrad Shawcross will have an installation at the IBM Building this Spring, according to Bloomberg‘s Farah Nyeri. He’s the son of biographer William Shawcross but also virulently opposed to the mechanism of the art market even though Charles Saatchi bought a significant work out of his first show. Saatchi’s enthusiasms–and art speculating–helped jump start his career.

Represented in London by Victoria Miro, his work has never been sold at auction: Buyers of his art, he says, are not speculators.

“There are galleries in London that work almost like hedge funds for art,” he says. “They’re selling to people who are not that interested in the work, but who want to turn it over in a year.”

Shawcross is happy to see an end to the art-market frenzy that was rampant 18 months ago. “There was this whole boom and bust thing going on,” he says. “It was vulgar, some of it, and not that pleasant.” […]

Rope was at the core of Shawcross’s very first machine, “The Nervous System” (2003), which he presented in his debut gallery show. Collector Charles Saatchi bought it, giving a career boost to the artist, then still in his 20s.

“He was the only person who would have ever bought this thing,” recalls Shawcross, who sports stubble, jeans and a brown cardigan. “This is quite a large work, so it was a real risk of his and real enthusiasm.”

Shawcross also has made outsized works involving loops, spirals and tetrahedrons. Geometry, physics and engineering underpin much of what he does.

New York IBM Building to Host Rope Machine by Artist Shawcross (Bloomberg)