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Anthony Gormley

Anthony Gormley (Englisch)

Home, 1984

Lead, terracotta, gypsum, fiber glass
62164216 cm

Courtesy the artist and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna

Gormley’s works mostly focus on the human body in its diverse shapes and forms, which he has defamiliarized over many decades as cubes, blocks, and lines — to the point of the body becoming unrecognizable. The artist’s aim is to establish a further level, an intermediary skin” as a connection between the interior and exterior space. The definition of space” is difficult in any case, but Antony Gormley (*1950 London, lives in London) again and again manages in surprising ways to inspire viewers to gain expanded views of spaces that are usually reduced to the dimensions of height, width, and depth.

In this sense, he began in the 1980s to make plaster casts of his own body with lead casings. At this time he also began to make works using brick clay, mostly buildings in dolls-house sizes that strictly adhere to the rules of architecture while presenting the interior spaces as refuges — as places of security but also of the imprisonment of the spirit.

The building into whose entrance the head of Gormley’s figure is leaning has the usual features of a typical detached house. The primary sensation that Home evokes is claustrophobia, but it can also be personal space of well-being that no one else may enter.

Antony Gormley

*1950 London, lives in London

first studied archaeology, anthropology and art history and is now known for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that focus on the relationship of the human body to space. In a critical examination of both his own and other people’s bodies, his works address fundamental questions about man’s position in relation to nature and the cosmos. His intention conceives the space of art as his place of becoming, of emergence, in which new behaviors, thoughts and feelings germinate.
In Austria he inspired in 2010 – 2012 by his project called Horizon Field”, in which he distributed 100 iron figures made of solid cast iron over 8 sites and over an area of 150 km², from Mellau to Dalaas (Vorarlberg), in the Alpine region.
Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994 and since being knighted in 2014 he has been allowed to use the title Sir”.

His numerous exhibitions range from the National Gallery, Singapore, Schauwerk Sindelfingen, Sindelfingen, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Hayward Gallery, London to Malmö Konsthall, Sweden.