Antony Gormley

UNLIMITED, ART BASEL, BASEL, SWITZERLAND, 2013

13 June - 16 June 2013

On view as part of Art Basel was Antony Gormley's DRIFT I (2007/2012). ART UNLIMITED is a pioneering exhibition platform for projects that transcend the limitations of a classical art-show stand. The innovative work has included out-sized sculpture and paintings, video projections, large-scale installations and live performances. 

Gormley once said of this DRIFT I:

'DRIFT I is a lightweight structure that exists on the cusp between a drawing and a thing. Conceived of as a three-dimensional drawing in space derived through generative evolution, it has adequate mass to be called an object but expresses enough of a field function to be thought of as a place. I like the idea of sculpture as a catalyst, engaging and activating space in such a way that the moving body of the viewer reviews its own relationship with space at large.

Neither architecture nor anatomy, all the DRIFT works are more like the random matrices found in fractal geometry. These bundles of nothing are the most dematerialized works I have ever made. Rather than representing the body itself, the work tries to show the space where a body was. This memory is lost in space, weightless, and with no internal determination. It appears as an emergent zone: you cannot be sure whether the matrix is produced by the body-zone or the zone by the matrix. The bubble matrix series is the closest I get to Brancusi's notion that you can turn an object into light. He did it by polishing sculptures, whereas I have tried to do it by abandoning weight and mass and dissolving surface.'

DRIFT I, 2007/2012

DRIFT I, 2007/2012
3 mm square section stainless steel bar
190 x 270 x 170 cm