ANTONY GORMLEY: SECOND BODY AT GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC PARIS
March 1, 2015 - July 18, 2015
ANTONY GORMLEY: SECOND BODY AT GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC PARIS
March 1, 2015 - July 18, 2015
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is delighted to host a major
exhibition of sculptures by Antony Gormley in the vast halls of the gallery
space in Pantin. The exhibition continues the artist’s investigation of body
and space, interrogating the body as place and architecture as the primary
conditioner of our experience of space. Antony Gormley fully exploits the scale
and volumes of the former foundry sheds that now form the gallery, catalysing
our experience of space and time through works that either constitute or are
arranged as “fields”. In a recent statement, the artist
describes being “increasingly interested in the tropes of
framing, containing and constructing being freed from architecture’s shelter
function… to make a psychological architecture that allows surface and mass,
light and dark, open and closed volumes free play in works that become places
for an adventure in real time.”
The first work in the exhibition and the sole occupant of
the first gallery is a four-metre-high model of a house as a body. This work
objectifies and internalises the relationship between a perceiving human body
and its habitat by mining and perforating the normally closed bodyvolumes using
the languages of cells, corridors, shafts and windows, presenting the
subjective body as a mansion of many chambers.
This idea of the transmutation of the anatomical body into
interconnected cells is continued in the second gallery space with the
installation Expansion Field. The
sixty sculptures that constitute this piece are arranged in four rows; a
totalised environment constructed in Corten steel sheet from expansions of over
twenty fundamental body poses. Each work has been evolved by applying regular
increments of expansion to each of the constituent cells of a particular body
stack. Together the group of sculptures form a field similar in appearance to
the repeated units of a minimalist installation or the rows of megaliths at
Carnac.
In the largest and highest space in the exhibition another
field is installed. Here, well over lifesize cast iron stelae immerse viewers
in a forest of totemic presence, in which they are invited to intuit somatic
gestalts evoking a variety of emotions, from resistance to delirium.
The final work in the exhibition, Matrix II, is made specifically for the
fourth space of the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin. It is virtual
architecture, a three-dimensional drawing that identifies sixteen room-sized
volumes that interconnect around a void space equivalent to two adjacent standing
bodies. Using re-enforcing mesh, the skeleton of cast-concrete buildings, Matrix II interrogates the form and
structure of the human habitat. This work reveals itself to the gaze of an
ambulatory visitor and invites visual penetration, while denying physical
access. The challenge of distinguishing foreground, mid-ground and background
in the multiple layers of
mesh is a vertiginous optical task. As the viewer circulates
around the work it creates a disorientating perceptual field in which
figure/ground relations become inverted and the accelerating effects of
compressed perspective confuses the eye.
The effect of each of these works displayed through the four
halls in Pantin is to disorientate the viewers and invite them on a journey of
auto-observation. Second Body is a continuation of the
artist's conception of the exhibition as a physical and psychological test site.
A bilingual catalogue in English and French with texts by
the American choreographer William Forsythe, the art historian Guitemie Maldonado
and a conversation between Antony Gormley and Hans Ulrich Obrist will be
published to accompany the exhibition.
You may reach Antony Gormley’s interview with Pierre Tillet
and past exhibitions news at Zentrum Paul Klee, Gallery
Andersson Stockholm, White Cube Gallery Hong Kong, Xavier Hufkens Gallery and
Middelheim Museum to click below links.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2013/12/british-artist-antony-gormley.html
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/11/antony-gormley-expansion-field-at.html
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/09/antony-gormley-meet-at-gallery.html
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2013/12/british-artist-antony-gormley.html
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/04/antony-gormley-states-conditions-at.html
SECOND BODY
Installation View, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
Installation View, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
© Antony Gormley
BIG FALL 2014
Cast Iron
Dimensions: 297 x 74 x 67,5
© Antony Gormley
‘’ The installation celebrates the infinity of the imagination
experienced in the darkness
of the body and in the sky at night. ‘’
of the body and in the sky at night. ‘’
Antony Gormley
SMALL
ACHE V - 2013
Cast
Iron
Dimensions: 83 x 27,5 x 34,5
©
Antony Gormley
SECOND BODY
Installation View, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
Installation View, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
© Antony Gormley
SMALL STOP 2013
Cast Iron
Dimensions: 26,5 x 23 x 40
© Antony Gormley
SECOND BODY
Installation View, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
Installation View, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
© Antony Gormley
HOLE
2014
©
Antony Gormley
HOLE,
2014
8 mm Corten Steel
Dimensions: 365 x 241 x 310 cm
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
8 mm Corten Steel
Dimensions: 365 x 241 x 310 cm
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
©
Antony Gormley
BIG SPACE 2014
Cast Iron
Dimensions: 311,5 x 69 x 55,5
© Antony Gormley
BIG GUT II AND EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
© Antony Gormley
VIEW FROM ANTONY GORMLEY'S STUDIO
VIEW FROM ANTONY GORMLEY'S STUDIO
SECOND BODY, GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC, PARIS PANTIN, FRANCE,
2015
In SECOND BODY, the four main halls of the gallery become
different zones of experience that relate to each other, hopefully creating an
experience greater than the sum of its parts. On entering the first space one
encounters STOP, a work made of 14 solid lead blocks which consciously reflects
the history of the building. All of the blocks are presented in dynamic
relation to one another and their combined dead load allows them to cohere into
a single body form. STOP initiates the theme of the 'second body' where anatomy gives way to
architecture, and the body is translated into the masses and voids of the built
environment.
By being so much smaller than life-size, STOP also sets in motion a concern with scale that runs throughout the exhibition. At the other end of this first gallery space is a much larger than life-size work of a crouching figure with a body that becomes hollow. HOLE is a mansion of many chambers purposefully facing the opposite direction, encouraging the viewer to circum navigate and view the work from the far side. What was solid, dark matter in the first work is translated here into a subtle interplay between light and shade. The side of the work first facing you as you enter invites you to look within the square void in its back and appreciate the light running through it; a corridor to the heart of the work. HOLE suggests that the singular body can also be a model for the collective body, where the interlocking cells mirror the way sites within a city interpenetrate each other.
By being so much smaller than life-size, STOP also sets in motion a concern with scale that runs throughout the exhibition. At the other end of this first gallery space is a much larger than life-size work of a crouching figure with a body that becomes hollow. HOLE is a mansion of many chambers purposefully facing the opposite direction, encouraging the viewer to circum navigate and view the work from the far side. What was solid, dark matter in the first work is translated here into a subtle interplay between light and shade. The side of the work first facing you as you enter invites you to look within the square void in its back and appreciate the light running through it; a corridor to the heart of the work. HOLE suggests that the singular body can also be a model for the collective body, where the interlocking cells mirror the way sites within a city interpenetrate each other.
Having established this dialectic of scale and of mass and
void, where architecture replaces anatomy, these themes are carried further in
the galleries to the left and to the right of the entrance hall. Immediately to
the left is EXPANSION FIELD, a work made of sixty sculptures of different sizes
which the viewer is invited to walk through. Here, differing scale is not the
result of proportional enlargement of human form but of incremental expansion
through applying the terms of the cosmological constant: here, the expansion of
cosmic space is applied to the subjective condition of the individual. The installation celebrates the infinity of the imagination
experienced in the darkness of the body and in the sky at night.
In the third and largest space there is a relational field of dark, unstable columns. Here are 16 larger than life-size anaerobic, black oxide iron blockworks each weighing over two tonnes. I hope that the passage of the viewer and their empathetic projection are drawn towards these stacked, propped, cantilevered masses which may seem at first cold and forbidding but in spite of, or perhaps because of their reticence, contain feeling. This is all difficult stuff to articulate but my sense is that as the work gets more brutal in its geometry, it is able to be more telling in its emotional range.
To the right of the entrance hall is MATRIX II, the largest single work in the exhibition. Sixteen room-scaled volumes made in reinforced steel mesh interpenetrate, identifying a void space equivalent to two bodies. This is the materialisation of perspective, the phenomenon which, in the 15th century Italy, gave rise to the pictorial control of space. In MATRIX II, perspective is used to destroy perspective. This materialised grid system gives a great sense of disorientation. As you are drawn by these push-pull perspectives and as you walk around the piece, the impossibility of reconciling foreground, mid-ground and background and the absence of any figure within this ground undermine any certainty of the stability of architecture itself.
I have attempted to use the space of the gallery as a foil against which the themes of body and architecture are played out in four distinct 'field' experiences. The exhibition becomes a test site for the auto-observation of the viewer's own sense of mass, scale and movement in time and space.
Antony Gormley, London, 12 February 2015
In the third and largest space there is a relational field of dark, unstable columns. Here are 16 larger than life-size anaerobic, black oxide iron blockworks each weighing over two tonnes. I hope that the passage of the viewer and their empathetic projection are drawn towards these stacked, propped, cantilevered masses which may seem at first cold and forbidding but in spite of, or perhaps because of their reticence, contain feeling. This is all difficult stuff to articulate but my sense is that as the work gets more brutal in its geometry, it is able to be more telling in its emotional range.
To the right of the entrance hall is MATRIX II, the largest single work in the exhibition. Sixteen room-scaled volumes made in reinforced steel mesh interpenetrate, identifying a void space equivalent to two bodies. This is the materialisation of perspective, the phenomenon which, in the 15th century Italy, gave rise to the pictorial control of space. In MATRIX II, perspective is used to destroy perspective. This materialised grid system gives a great sense of disorientation. As you are drawn by these push-pull perspectives and as you walk around the piece, the impossibility of reconciling foreground, mid-ground and background and the absence of any figure within this ground undermine any certainty of the stability of architecture itself.
I have attempted to use the space of the gallery as a foil against which the themes of body and architecture are played out in four distinct 'field' experiences. The exhibition becomes a test site for the auto-observation of the viewer's own sense of mass, scale and movement in time and space.
Antony Gormley, London, 12 February 2015
EXPANSION FIELD AND BIG SPIN, 2014
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
© Antony Gormley
EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten Steel
60 elements; Variable Dimensions
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
4 mm Corten Steel
60 elements; Variable Dimensions
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
© Antony Gormley
EXPANSION FIELD, 14/60, 2014
4 mm Corten Steel
Dimensions: 199.8 x 56.9 x 50.1 cm
© Antony Gormley
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
Paris/Salzburg
Photograph by Jürgen Brinkmann
EXPANSION FIELD 40/60 - 2014
4 mm. Corten Steel
Dimensions: 201 x 59,9 x 60,3
© Antony Gormley
EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten Steel
60 elements; Variable Dimensions
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
4 mm Corten Steel
60 elements; Variable Dimensions
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
© Antony Gormley
EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten Steel
60 elements; Variable Dimensions
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
4 mm Corten Steel
60 elements; Variable Dimensions
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
© Antony Gormley
Digital rendering of Antony Gormley’s Matrix II - 2014
MATRIX II, 2014
6 mm Mild Steel Reinforcing Mesh
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
6 mm Mild Steel Reinforcing Mesh
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
, ©
Antony Gormley
MATRIX II, 2014
6 mm Mild Steel Reinforcing Mesh
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
6 mm Mild Steel Reinforcing Mesh
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
, © Antony Gormley
TRIAL, 2013
Cast Iron
Dimensions: 192 x 62 x 52 cm
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
Cast Iron
Dimensions: 192 x 62 x 52 cm
Installation View SECOND BODY Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France
Photograph by Charles Duprat
© Antony Gormley
ANTONY GORMLEY
Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950 and received a
degree from Trinity College, Cambridge in Archaeology, Anthropology and History
of Art. Upon completing his undergraduate studies, he travelled for three years
in India before returning to enrol in London’s Central School of Art,
Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Art. He was awarded the Turner Prize
in 1994, the South Bank Prize in 1999, was made an Officer of the Order of the
British Empire (OBE) in 1997 and has been a Royal Academician since 2003. In
2011 he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in
Dance in recognition of his set for Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Babel. In 2013 he received the
Praemium Imperiale and in 2014 he was made Knight Commander of the Order of the
British Empire for Services to the Arts.
Gormley’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK
and internationally with exhibitions at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São
Paulo, Rio di Janeiro and Brasilia (2012); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2012); The State
Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2010);
Hayward Gallery, London (2007); Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (1993) and Louisiana
Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (1989). He has also participated in
major group shows such as the Venice Biennale (1982 and 1986) and Documenta 8,
Kassel, Germany (1987).
The notable current exhibitions of Gormley’s works are Expansion Field, Zentrum Paul Klee,
Bern, Switzerland (until 11 January 2015); Sesostris
III: A Legendary Pharaoh, Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille,
France (until 25 January 2015) and Sculpture
21st: Antony Gormley, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (until 1 February
2015). In May 2015 the exhibition Land will take place at various
sites in the United Kingdom and it will be visible for one year.
