Antony Gormley

OPEN BLOCKWORKS, 2014 - 2018

I wanted to open the body up. I had been using absolute masses that are solid and confront you with your own bodily spatial displacement, but another way is to make intersecting cells out of planes that are enclosures but are open enough to invite a speleology of the eye. Another way is a line that interrogates and energises space. I want to enliven the viewer's inquisitiveness but also confront them with their own passage through space and time. I constantly seek a tension between mass and space, open and closed, stability and the potential to fall. They go from very transparent to then being very dense. It's like when you enter a room occupied by a group of people that you haven't met before and you move from one to another, talking to them. Here you can do it in a physical way, circulating around the works. OPEN SWITCH (2016) is probably the most unstable and has the most voids, it is almost abstract and falling. You have to walk around these works in order to assemble them for yourself. 

They are often twisted, where the centre of gravity is pushed over the edge and then recovered. OPEN GAUGE (2015) is probably the most classic, a riff on the odalisque. In this position, it is completely dense but as you move around it, it disintegrates into cells, it says 'Come, look at me', but OPEN HOME (2014) is very defensive. This dance of open and closed is not just a game of construction, it's also a psychological game.

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INTROVERT, 2014

INTROVERT, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
191.4 x 42 x 33.4 cm
Installation view Galleri Andersson/Sandström Stockholm, 2014
Photograph by Jean-Baptiste Béranger

OPEN CLASP, 2014

OPEN CLASP, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
191.5 x 43 x 29.5 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

OPEN WRENCH, 2014

OPEN WRENCH, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
175 x 45.5 x 40.4 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

OPEN HOME, 2014

OPEN HOME, 2014
4 mm Corten steel
178.8 x 41.2 x 41 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

HOLE, 2014

HOLE, 2014
8 mm Corten steel
365 x 241 x 310 cm
Installation view, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, 2015
Photograph by Charles Duprat, Paris

OPEN GAUGE, 2015

OPEN GAUGE, 2015
4 mm Corten steel
184.3 x 41.2 x 31 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

OPEN STALL, 2015

OPEN STALL, 2015
4 mm Corten steel
192 x 50 x 34 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

OPEN HEED, 2015

OPEN HEED, 2015
4 mm Corten steel
191.7 x 46.1 x 37 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

OPEN GAZE, 2016

OPEN GAZE, 2016
6 mm Corten steel
372.5 x 89 x 79 cm
OPEN GAZE, 2016
6 mm Corten steel
372.5 x 89 x 79 cm
Installation view, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium, 2017
Photograph by Allard Bovenberg, Amsterdam

OPEN HOME II, 2016

OPEN HOME II, 2016
4 mm Corten steel
180.1 x 48.7 x 41.3 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

OPEN SWITCH, 2016

OPEN SWITCH, 2016
4 mm Corten steel
185.6 x 45 x 41 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

LIVING ROOM, 2016

LIVING ROOM, 2016
4 mm Corten steel
21.4 x 194 x 49.5 cm (Figure 1)
21.4 x 194 x 49.5 cm (Figure 2)
Photograph by Stephen White, London

OPEN SCAPE, 2016

OPEN SCAPE, 2016
4 mm Corten steel
19.5 x 52.4 x 191.7 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

OPEN BRACE, 2017

OPEN BRACE, 2017
4 mm Corten steel
180 x 47.6 x 77 cm
Photograph by Stephen White, London

OPEN INTROVERT IV, 2018

OPEN INTROVERT IV, 2018
4 mm Corten steel
190.1 x 41.2 x 35.8 cm
Photograph by Stephen White & Co.
© the artist