Sculpting Space

Last week’s Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series lecture at the Michigan Theatre brought UK artist Antony Gormley to town, who is redefining sculpture as we know it. His vast amount of work was accurately portrayed by the few installations he discussed, exploring the relationship between human beings and the spaces we interact with.

Drawn introduces us to this particular “genre” of spatial figure sculpture, flipping the roles of art and viewer upside down – and sideways. The eight identical bodies cast with modern industrial techniques shrink into the corners of the gallery as far as possible, avoiding the probing stares of visitors, who become the real vehicles of Gormley’s concept.

Horizon Field Hamburg and One and Other reinforce audience interaction as the door to Gormley’s “open space of art”, operating as two different approaches to the relationship between individual and collective responses. Horizon Field Hamburg explores the lack of control a single person can have in public spaces with a large, black-mirror platform suspended thirty feet in the air by six metal cables. The platform is capable of swinging six feet in any direction, which is constantly influenced by viewers moving around on the glossy painted surface. Conversely, One and Other highlights the power of the individual, by quite literally placing its singular form on a pedestal. Volunteers signed a schedule securing their one-hour on the plinth, which also stood at thirty feet tall. Coincidence? I think not. These brave “living sculptures” were given complete creative control, and the perfect stage to make a statement of their choosing. The crowd that gathered at the base of the plinth was subject to whatever the person decided to show them, whether it was an act of humor or sincere emotion.

  

Installations like Breathing Room, Blind Light, and Model directly challenge the viewers’ perceptions of space and self by initiating a more intimate conversation with the senses. By constructing architectural forms intended to be occupied, the form of these sculptures is both vital and secondary at the same time, emphasizing the fact that art doesn’t “happen” in objects or images themselves, but in the creative spaces of the mind. The sculptural objects – or “systems” in Gormley’s case – are only there to lead the viewer’s wandering thoughts in the right direction.

  

The importance of these works is in the way they highlight the transformation of an art object into an art experience, defined by the appropriation of the power inherent to public sculpture. Gormley is able to transcend the traditional techniques of expression through the figure, exploring its place in an age of mechanization. His work embodies the transition from an object that relies on the coherent story of representation, and towards “objects” that are spaces to be explored creatively and critically.

To me, Antoni Gormley is one of those artists whose work you discover and experience the excitement of finding a new major influence, with an undertone of jealousy for having made such incredible objects (or experiences). I’m currently in my “making other people” phase of figure sculpture, and bumbling through the mess that is oil paint, so Gormley’s approach to “recycling” the traditional elements of art really struck a cord with me. We have to look back to move forward. We have to know our context in this strange creative space of culture that art occupies, in order to continue making relevant work. The way that Gormley simultaneously refers to and contradicts the traditional notions of space help to place him in conversation with his ancestry of sculptors, but also with everyone who is alive to experience his work in the present.

The entire hour of Antony Gormley’s lecture is available here:

Penny Stamps Lecture Series Antony Gormley

But due to the length and some technical difficulties, I’d recommend watching this one explaining Model instead, to get an equally enlightening understanding of what this guy is all about.

Model