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Lot Essay
Retort II refers to the alchemical vessel that is used in the sublimation of matter from a gross to a purified state. It is one of a series of four works that consider the transition of my work from body-cases to body-forms, involving both revealing and concealing the appearance of a body.
The breathing relationship between interior and exterior space has been explored in the drawing An Exercise Between Blood and Earth, which was shown at the Milan Triennale in 1980; followed by the Expansion series, exhibited in Sweden and Japan between 1993–96; through to the Insiders series, most spectacularly realised in the work Inside Australia at Lake Ballard in Western Australia in 2003. The Insiders sculptures concentrate the body zone into a dense mass that is one third of the body volume.
Retort II treats the body as a place of transformation, reconciling expanded and contracted skins. The inner skin, identifying the Insider, is made of tightly packed cells, and the outer, expanded skin, is an open net. This work eliminates the zone of appearance, re-articulating the place of the body as the dynamic between this porous expanded field and a condensed inner core.
Retort II hangs loosely from the ceiling and turns slowly, referencing the spacewalk of an astronaut. The Insider is to the body what memory is to consciousness: a distillation of experience, while the porous outer skin evokes our bounding condition as an organ of perception.
Antony Gormley, May 2014
The breathing relationship between interior and exterior space has been explored in the drawing An Exercise Between Blood and Earth, which was shown at the Milan Triennale in 1980; followed by the Expansion series, exhibited in Sweden and Japan between 1993–96; through to the Insiders series, most spectacularly realised in the work Inside Australia at Lake Ballard in Western Australia in 2003. The Insiders sculptures concentrate the body zone into a dense mass that is one third of the body volume.
Retort II treats the body as a place of transformation, reconciling expanded and contracted skins. The inner skin, identifying the Insider, is made of tightly packed cells, and the outer, expanded skin, is an open net. This work eliminates the zone of appearance, re-articulating the place of the body as the dynamic between this porous expanded field and a condensed inner core.
Retort II hangs loosely from the ceiling and turns slowly, referencing the spacewalk of an astronaut. The Insider is to the body what memory is to consciousness: a distillation of experience, while the porous outer skin evokes our bounding condition as an organ of perception.
Antony Gormley, May 2014