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Lot Essay
'Gormley has spoken of his admiration for 6th century Jain sculpture and Southern Indian bronzes, remarking that he was much impressed by their 'stillness' (a quality that is possessed by the majority of his own body cases) he explained that, in order to hold a position for long enough for the artist, Vicken Parsons, to cover him with cling film, followed by scrim and plaster, he makes a concentrated act of attention; then, gradually, the drying plaster becomes substantial and starts to hold him in place. The process, therefore, is a kind of mummification or entombment which, in time, is followed by release'
(J. Hutchinson, Antony Gormley, London 2000, p. 46).
Signalling a pivotal moment in the artist's practice, Antony Gormley's supine body sculpture Construct I belongs to an important group of early solid iron casts of the artist's body that are created, for the first time, directly from a mould and mediated merely through a thin sheet of cling film. Balancing on small circular plates, with arms outstretched and fingers and toes reaching heavenwards, the work appears weightless, as though an ethereal levitating vision. Speaking about Construct I, Gormley remarked: 'In this work, the body is a sensor of its own condition, the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are vertical planes pushing against virtual walls. The body as the site of life is tested against the room as the site of the body: implicating the viewer's presence in the process' (A. Gormley, May 2012).
First exhibited in 1996 in Inside the Inside at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Construct I was shown alongside Reach I, Test I, Concentrate I and Compound I. The five works included in this exhibition contemplated the space occupied and perceived by the body. As the artist has commented, 'My work is to make bodies into vessels that both contain and occupy space. Space exists outside the door and inside my head. My work is to make a human space in space' (A. Gormley, quoted in 'Notes by the Artist', Antony Gormley: Five Works, exh. cat., Serpentine Gallery, London, 1987, unpaged). The Inside the Inside series was created as a response to Gormley's geometrical block works from the early 1990s, such as Flesh (1990), Sense (1991) and Base (1993). Indeed, in the way that Base incorporates the body with limbs stretching outwards within its concrete form can be understood as a particularly significant precedent to Construct I.
Cast from the artist's own body, the casting technique of Construct I enabled Gormley to capture a meditative moment in time. The artist began to experiment with cast iron in 1990, however in Construct I Gormley allows the form of his sculptures to reveal the process of their making. Resembling an architectural juncture in the body, the small circular roundels on the shoulders, chest and buttocks of the sculpture allude to the industrial method necessary to create this robust and durable structure. In Construct I Gormley boldly challenges our understanding of gravitational force. The impenetrable, dense sculpture presents an elegant illusion, the human body appearing poised and freely balanced in space.
(J. Hutchinson, Antony Gormley, London 2000, p. 46).
Signalling a pivotal moment in the artist's practice, Antony Gormley's supine body sculpture Construct I belongs to an important group of early solid iron casts of the artist's body that are created, for the first time, directly from a mould and mediated merely through a thin sheet of cling film. Balancing on small circular plates, with arms outstretched and fingers and toes reaching heavenwards, the work appears weightless, as though an ethereal levitating vision. Speaking about Construct I, Gormley remarked: 'In this work, the body is a sensor of its own condition, the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are vertical planes pushing against virtual walls. The body as the site of life is tested against the room as the site of the body: implicating the viewer's presence in the process' (A. Gormley, May 2012).
First exhibited in 1996 in Inside the Inside at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Construct I was shown alongside Reach I, Test I, Concentrate I and Compound I. The five works included in this exhibition contemplated the space occupied and perceived by the body. As the artist has commented, 'My work is to make bodies into vessels that both contain and occupy space. Space exists outside the door and inside my head. My work is to make a human space in space' (A. Gormley, quoted in 'Notes by the Artist', Antony Gormley: Five Works, exh. cat., Serpentine Gallery, London, 1987, unpaged). The Inside the Inside series was created as a response to Gormley's geometrical block works from the early 1990s, such as Flesh (1990), Sense (1991) and Base (1993). Indeed, in the way that Base incorporates the body with limbs stretching outwards within its concrete form can be understood as a particularly significant precedent to Construct I.
Cast from the artist's own body, the casting technique of Construct I enabled Gormley to capture a meditative moment in time. The artist began to experiment with cast iron in 1990, however in Construct I Gormley allows the form of his sculptures to reveal the process of their making. Resembling an architectural juncture in the body, the small circular roundels on the shoulders, chest and buttocks of the sculpture allude to the industrial method necessary to create this robust and durable structure. In Construct I Gormley boldly challenges our understanding of gravitational force. The impenetrable, dense sculpture presents an elegant illusion, the human body appearing poised and freely balanced in space.