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Lot Essay
‘I use the construction language of the built world; pillars and lintels, to evoke the inner condition of the body, treating the body less as a thing than a place. There is a tension between a suggested symmetry and the actual articulation of a body, so that very slight variations in the alignment of the blocks can be read empathetically as an indication of the total body feeling. All of these pieces attempt to treat the body as a condition; being, not doing.’
—ANTONY GORMLEY
A stacked tower of cast-iron cuboid blocks, COLLECT (2014) presents the human figure re-described in the language of Euclidean geometry. The figure appears at once impressively monolithic, and yet also poised on the verge of instability. The work is part of Gormley’s Blockworks series, some of the artist’s most robust and contemplative considerations of the human body. Discussing the series, the artist has reflected on the works’ architectural quality, and the relationship between this quality and the psychological expressiveness of the body itself: ‘They use the construction language of the built world, pillars and lintels, to evoke the inner condition of the body, treating the body less as a thing than a place. There is a tension between a suggested symmetry and the actual articulation of a body, so that very slight variations in the alignment of the blocks can be read empathetically as an indication of the total body feeling. All of these pieces attempt to treat the body as a condition: being, not doing’ (A. Gormley, ‘Larger Cast Blockworks’, http:/www.antonygormley.com/sculpture/item-view/id/283 [accessed 1 February 2017]). Thus, in Collect, Gormley looks to give the ‘feeling’ a physical location and shape that is relatable to the viewer’s own, asking the viewer to consider the form of the sculpture in relation to themselves and to read its delicate suggestions of movement and poise through the frame of their own body.
In this empathic meeting between viewer and sculpture, Gormley invites a moment of self-reflection as the viewer becomes aware of their own physicality, thoughts and feelings. This speaks directly to ancient traditions of sculpture, and Gormley himself takes a wide-angled historical view of his work: ‘I am aware that sculpture has always tried to defy death, and it is thereby bound up with a sense of our own mortality. But behind all of that is a much bigger issue, which is really the extinction of the human project… If we take the standing stone as the sort of ‘Ur-sculpture’, which I think it is, it is the ultimate witness of time and space and an attempt to mark the surfaces of the world with some indicator of the conscious mind’ (A. Gormley, quoted in M. Iversen, ‘Still Standing’, Antony Gormley: Still Standing, exh. cat., The Hermitage State Museum, St Petersburg, 2011, p. 50).
In this sense, COLLECT is as much about the historical act of sculpture itself: both a primitive stack of standing stones, and a sophisticated rendering of the human form, the work reflects an ancient, universal desire to ‘mark the surface of the world’.
—ANTONY GORMLEY
A stacked tower of cast-iron cuboid blocks, COLLECT (2014) presents the human figure re-described in the language of Euclidean geometry. The figure appears at once impressively monolithic, and yet also poised on the verge of instability. The work is part of Gormley’s Blockworks series, some of the artist’s most robust and contemplative considerations of the human body. Discussing the series, the artist has reflected on the works’ architectural quality, and the relationship between this quality and the psychological expressiveness of the body itself: ‘They use the construction language of the built world, pillars and lintels, to evoke the inner condition of the body, treating the body less as a thing than a place. There is a tension between a suggested symmetry and the actual articulation of a body, so that very slight variations in the alignment of the blocks can be read empathetically as an indication of the total body feeling. All of these pieces attempt to treat the body as a condition: being, not doing’ (A. Gormley, ‘Larger Cast Blockworks’, http:/www.antonygormley.com/sculpture/item-view/id/283 [accessed 1 February 2017]). Thus, in Collect, Gormley looks to give the ‘feeling’ a physical location and shape that is relatable to the viewer’s own, asking the viewer to consider the form of the sculpture in relation to themselves and to read its delicate suggestions of movement and poise through the frame of their own body.
In this empathic meeting between viewer and sculpture, Gormley invites a moment of self-reflection as the viewer becomes aware of their own physicality, thoughts and feelings. This speaks directly to ancient traditions of sculpture, and Gormley himself takes a wide-angled historical view of his work: ‘I am aware that sculpture has always tried to defy death, and it is thereby bound up with a sense of our own mortality. But behind all of that is a much bigger issue, which is really the extinction of the human project… If we take the standing stone as the sort of ‘Ur-sculpture’, which I think it is, it is the ultimate witness of time and space and an attempt to mark the surfaces of the world with some indicator of the conscious mind’ (A. Gormley, quoted in M. Iversen, ‘Still Standing’, Antony Gormley: Still Standing, exh. cat., The Hermitage State Museum, St Petersburg, 2011, p. 50).
In this sense, COLLECT is as much about the historical act of sculpture itself: both a primitive stack of standing stones, and a sophisticated rendering of the human form, the work reflects an ancient, universal desire to ‘mark the surface of the world’.