Throughout their twenty years of collecting art, Norman and Norah Stone have exhibited an extraordinary willingness to engage themselves with the work of young artists, often acquiring their work in depth. One such artist is Keith Tyson (born 1969, Cumbria), who graduated with a BA in Alternative Practice from the University of Brighton. His practice explores life phenomena and, particularly, the degree to which we are able to recognize and rationalize a relationship between any particular historical truth and the larger system of the infinite and knowable universe. In the mid-1990s, AMCHII-CCXLIV (I) – The Secretaries (Karen) (1996), a small painting from the early Artmachine Iteration series, became the first work of Tyson’s collected by the Stones. From there, the Stones dove into Tyson’s practice, purchasing the complex installation Dual Workstations (30 Seconds Late and Early) (1998–99) in 1999. Over the next few years, the Stones added to their collection a number of Tyson’s Studio Wall Drawings, which function both as art and as a method for the artist to explore his theories, as well as the important diptych, Bubble Chambers: 2 Discrete Molecules of Simultaneity (2002), which was included in the Turner Prize exhibition. So, in 2003, it was without hesitation that they agreed to purchase The Block (part of the Seven Wonders of the World series), an ambitious work by Tyson that embraced the entirety of his practice, but which was only in its planning stages. From this point, it took four years to fully realize the work.

Like the rest of Tyson’s work, The Block is a humanistic exploration of some of the philosophical conundrums often left unengaged in contemporary art-making practices. The block itself, a bronze cube, is placed amidst twenty-three framed photographs, twelve of which trace the artefact’s history in different sculptural incarnations – chance events that have brought the artist into being – from the Big Bang, to the birth of man, to scientific exploration in the age of the Enlightenment. The remaining eleven photographs document the intermediate stages in which the block is melted down and recast in order to assume its next form. The presence of the block implies further manifestations of the form documenting Tyson’s cycle of existence, as well as bringing to mind its indeterminate status, underscoring the universe of infinite possibilities.

Norman and Norah Stone have for the past twenty years worked with the New York firm Thea Westreich Art Advisory Services. From their first moment of collaboration with Westreich, the Stones were alerted to and acquired many of the important artists of the 1980s, such as John Baldessari, Robert Gober, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman, in advance of the historical and market approbation that those artists have received. The Stones continue to identify and collect works by artists who represent the most important art-making practices of their time.