Antony Gormley KUB 09.03

Antony Gormley
Feeling Material XXXII | 2008
5-mm-Vierkant-Flussstahlstab
217 × 198 × 185 cm
Fotografie: Stephen White
nest to entrap and entrance the viewer, confusing and contradicting
the clearly defined volumes of Zumthor’s architecture while
remaining open to atmospheric changes of light. This sensation is
contrasted by the results of a contained explosion where the physical
meets the incommensurable in the seven tonnes of rusting iron
that make up Body and Fruit.
These, the first works encountered on entering the KUB,
are two of Gormley’s Expansion Works, made between 1990 and
1994. The skin, or sensory limit of the body, is extended through
the application of consistent spars radiating from nodal points at
the extremities of the body. These are linked together at their outer
ends to form a continuous surface. Body (1991– 93, cast iron, 6 t)
and Fruit (1991– 93, cast iron, 1.25 t) are derived from a body-mould
in a clasped diving position. The hanging of these two sculptural
objects sets up a relational field reconciling the human and planetary
body and engaging the viewer in a gravitational field in which these
large heavy objects hang just a few centimeters from the floor.
Replacing the biological body with “the second body of architecture”
on the first floor of KUB, Gormley presents Allotment II,
made in 1996 in Malmö, Sweden. A total of three hundred people –
men, women and children aged from one and a half to eighty
years – were measured following a set of thirteen strict body measurements
provided by the artist. The resulting data defines the
height, width and depth of the body; the location of the head; the
dimensions of the mouth, nose and ears; and the height of the
shoulders, anus and genitals from the floor. From these detailed
measurements the artist constructed three hundred reenforced
concrete cases (each 5 cm thick), translating the individual shape of
the respective person’s body into the form of a modernist bunker.
All body openings (mouth, ears, anus and genitalia) are transcribed
into the concrete box according to the individual’s measurements.
The reinforced concrete case is the minimum space necessary to
accommodate a particular body. Evocatively called “Rooms,”
collectively they resemble a city and refer to a sense of community
which transcends the individual subject. The smaller constructions
of heads upon the plinth-like concrete columns resemble water
tanks or plant rooms on high-rise tower-blocks while at the same
time, in their proximities and apartness, play out family relations.
Displayed in juxtaposition, a sense of the individual characteristics
of these intimate architectures emerges. As well as through obvious
variations in size and height, some subtle transfer of the character
of the original subject is displayed through small differences and
shifts in proportions. The geometrical grid and arrangement of the
individual works into blocks with streets and squares provide a
labyrinth in which the viewers can lose and find themselves, literally
and in ghost form, by measuring their own heights and girths against
those of absent subjects.