Edited by Jill van Coenegrachts, Alessandra Bellavita. Text by Pierre Tillet.
Exploring the tension between lightness and monumentality in the recent works of Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley (born 1950) is famed for the monumentality of his sculptures, the most famous example of which is the “Angel of the North,” built in 1998 in Gateshead, England. For his exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, Gormley presents both large-scale sculptures and works that are comparatively lighter and less declarative of mass and presence. Published for this exhibition, Antony Gormley: For the Time Being examines recent works exploring this tension, such as the Construct series, which range from a standing male figure with his hands at his sides and his head turned, to a cluster of vertical blocks that could be described as post-Constructivist, and recent public commissions such as “Exposure” (2010, executed for a site in the Netherlands) and “Habitat” (2010, erected in Anchorage, Alaska), which also demonstrate this tension of mass in space versus constellated nodes in space.
Featured image, Antony Gormley's Clutch VI, 2011, is reproduced from For the Time Being.
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FROM THE BOOK
"We are a long way here from the world of a museum, the art centre or the gallery, of which Robert Smithson once critically observed: 'Museums, like asylums and jails, have wards and cells--in other words, neutral rooms called "galleries." […] Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence. They are looked upon as so many inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable.' Smithson went on to state: 'I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation.' According to this conception, it is essential that art should not be put away in a place that serves as a refuge or shelter. To be active, works must be confronted with social space at its most heterogeneous--with the city, with the landscape, with the primary forces that are the rain, wind, air, earth and sea. Says Gormely: 'I'm not against museums, because I think they have a very important part to play in the memory of a culture. But before my work has any need to be in the museums, it has to have a life, it has to have adventures in the real world.'"
FORMAT: Pbk, 8.25 x 11 in. / 80 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $30.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $40 ISBN: 9782910055462 PUBLISHER: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac AVAILABLE: 1/31/2012 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AU/NZ AFR ME
Published by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Edited by Jill van Coenegrachts, Alessandra Bellavita. Text by Pierre Tillet.
Exploring the tension between lightness and monumentality in the recent works of Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley (born 1950) is famed for the monumentality of his sculptures, the most famous example of which is the “Angel of the North,” built in 1998 in Gateshead, England. For his exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, Gormley presents both large-scale sculptures and works that are comparatively lighter and less declarative of mass and presence. Published for this exhibition, Antony Gormley: For the Time Being examines recent works exploring this tension, such as the Construct series, which range from a standing male figure with his hands at his sides and his head turned, to a cluster of vertical blocks that could be described as post-Constructivist, and recent public commissions such as “Exposure” (2010, executed for a site in the Netherlands) and “Habitat” (2010, erected in Anchorage, Alaska), which also demonstrate this tension of mass in space versus constellated nodes in space.
