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Lot Essay
A dynamic rendering of the human form, formed of tightly coiled loops and spirals that expand into space, the present work stems from Antony Gormley’s celebrated series Feeling Material. Executed in 2005, and held in the same private collection since the following year, its continuous, seemingly endless steel wire conjures a force field or an unfurling spring, capturing a sense of the visceral energy that emanates from the body. For more than four decades, Gormley’s practice has sought to visualise the way in which we inhabit—and, by extension, activate—our surroundings. With Feeling Material, he explains, he wanted ‘to create a vortex that orbits the intimate zone of the body and then enters the space around it’ (A. Gormley, quoted in M. Mack (ed.), Antony Gormley, Göttingen 2007, p. 435). In the present work, the strands of wire encircle the figure like cosmic forces, recalling images of the Whirlpool Galaxy released from the Hubble Telescope that year. Fittingly, the artist donated a later work from the series to CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.
Created between 2003 and 2008, Feeling Material represents an important chapter in Gormley’s practice. In many of the series’ early works, the figural element was more abstract and loosely woven, anticipating his monumental Clearing installations that dispensed with the human body altogether. In both instances, Gormley conjured a sense of freehand drawing in space, calling to mind Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Deluge’ pictures as well as the raw automatism of Cy Twombly’s ‘Blackboards’. By the time of the present work, however, the figure had begun to re-emerge more strongly, with the looping strands of wire solidifying into a dark, central mass. ‘There is a concentration of energy similar to a black hole’, Gormley has explained, ‘where gravity and mass become very dense at the core of the sculpture. From a relatively chaotic energy field a condensed body mass emerges at the centre of the vortex’ (A. Gormley, Christie’s, January 2013). In this, the series’ name takes on a new relevance: the body seems to ‘feel’ its way into material existence, groping for tangible form amid an infinite, swirling mass. We, in turn, become newly aware of our own presence, and the forces that hold us in this world.
Created between 2003 and 2008, Feeling Material represents an important chapter in Gormley’s practice. In many of the series’ early works, the figural element was more abstract and loosely woven, anticipating his monumental Clearing installations that dispensed with the human body altogether. In both instances, Gormley conjured a sense of freehand drawing in space, calling to mind Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Deluge’ pictures as well as the raw automatism of Cy Twombly’s ‘Blackboards’. By the time of the present work, however, the figure had begun to re-emerge more strongly, with the looping strands of wire solidifying into a dark, central mass. ‘There is a concentration of energy similar to a black hole’, Gormley has explained, ‘where gravity and mass become very dense at the core of the sculpture. From a relatively chaotic energy field a condensed body mass emerges at the centre of the vortex’ (A. Gormley, Christie’s, January 2013). In this, the series’ name takes on a new relevance: the body seems to ‘feel’ its way into material existence, groping for tangible form amid an infinite, swirling mass. We, in turn, become newly aware of our own presence, and the forces that hold us in this world.