Antony Gormley

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014 - 2015

Over the years, my obsession has been to try to explore the body as a place rather than simply as an object and to reconcile its space with space at large. I want to acknowledge that while we live within a built environment and we are the only animal to construct a habitat using Euclidean principles, the moment we close our eyes and become conscious of the darkness of the body, we are in an unbounded, ever extending space without dimension. This intimate zone of experience has the same unlimited properties as the sky at night.

With this EXPANSION FIELD, the cosmological constant of an expanding universe is applied to the subjective space of the body. The work is comprised of 60 boxes that evoke the unstable place of the body as an architectural field: 60 cases for darkness, or night, each derived from the volumes of my body but translated into the geometry of architecture.

Fabricated in Corten steel and hermetically welded, the sculptures are absolute displacements of space; volumes of night placed in light. They are made from up to thirty different body positions that have each been expanded as many as six times, and the resulting expansions are orientated in all directions. The incremental expansion of these body zones is random but they are placed on a clear grid, through which the body of the viewer is invited to wander.

This is a reflective field in which subjective experience is catalysed by voided objects. The degree to which it encourages projection is the degree to which it encourages proprioception.

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EXPANSION FIELD, 2014

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
60 elements; variable dimensions
Installation view Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland
Photograph by Dominique Uldry

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
60 elements; variable dimensions
Installation view Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland
Photograph by Dominique Uldry

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
60 elements; variable dimensions
Installation view Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland
Photograph by Dominique Uldry

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
60 elements; variable dimensions
Installation view Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Pantin, Paris, France, 2015
Photograph by Charles Duprat

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
60 elements; variable dimensions
Installation view Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Pantin, Paris, France, 2015
Photograph by Charles Duprat

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
60 elements; variable dimensions
Installation view Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Pantin, Paris, France, 2015
Photograph by Charles Duprat

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
60 elements; variable dimensions
Photograph by Jürgen Brinkmann

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014

EXPANSION FIELD, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
60 elements; variable dimensions
Digital render

BREATH (INCREMENTAL EXPANSION) MODELS 1

BREATH (INCREMENTAL EXPANSION) MODELS 1, 2014
Nylon
10 elements: 20 x 5.5 x 2.3 cm - 51.3 x 33.7 x 36.8 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

WORK IN PROGRESS, 2014

WORK IN PROGRESS, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
60 elements; variable dimensions
Work in Progress
Fabrication: Heinrich Rohlfing GmbH, Germany

EXPANSION FIELD
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland 7min09

SECOND BODY, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Pantin, FranceSECOND BODY, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Pantin, France Zentrum Paul Klee exhibition publicationZentrum Paul Klee exhibition publication EXPANSION FIELD, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, SwitzerlandEXPANSION FIELD, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland