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Lot Essay
Antony Gormley’s CONSTRUCT VI offers what the artist has called ‘an objective mapping of a subjective space.’ Part of the artist’s Framer series, which uses architectural forms to describe and extend the body, the work is composed of nested and stacked frames that correspond to a corporeal volume. Resembling both a static drawing and a kinetic sculpture, the work encourages multiple views and vantage points; CONSTRUCT VI is intended to be seen and experienced in the round. Indeed, the slender forms of the sculpture recall the ethereality of the artist’s 2006 installation Breathing Room, which ‘use[d] the idea of architecture, transforming it into body-structures in a virtual way,’ to create an immersive world at once virtual and physical. Likewise, Construct VI is ever shifting.
Deconstructing the volumes of his Blockworks sculptures, the present work continues Gormley’s use of an abstract modernist idiom in his engagement with and appraisal of the sculptural medium. Indeed, the works of this period refer specifically to the languages of de Stijl and American Minimalism, and like his predecessors, Gormley too emphasises a sculptural autonomy. The artist has long worked to free his art from a purely retinal engagement, stating, ‘I want to work to activate the space around it and engender a psycho-physical response, allowing those in its field of influence to be more aware of their bodies and surroundings’ (A. Gormley, ‘The Impossible Self’, 1988, accessed on 28 September 2021, https://antonygormley.com/resources/essay-item/id/142). Life-sized and freestanding, Construct VI engages with its viewer and their shared environment.
If modernism can at times feel austere, Gormley’s figures are suffused with an uncanny pathos. The linearity of CONSTRUCT VI may seem objective, but the work encourages communion and reflection. By making the body his recurrent subject, Gormley has found an image that traverses cultural and temporal difference. The simplicity of CONSTRUCT VI contains myriad potential histories and feelings, and comprehends the complexities of being in the world. ‘The body is a language before language,’ says Gormley. ‘When made still in sculpture it can be a witness to life’ (A. Gormley, quoted in U. Kittelmann, ed., Total Strangers, exh. cat. Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne 1999, p. 22).
Deconstructing the volumes of his Blockworks sculptures, the present work continues Gormley’s use of an abstract modernist idiom in his engagement with and appraisal of the sculptural medium. Indeed, the works of this period refer specifically to the languages of de Stijl and American Minimalism, and like his predecessors, Gormley too emphasises a sculptural autonomy. The artist has long worked to free his art from a purely retinal engagement, stating, ‘I want to work to activate the space around it and engender a psycho-physical response, allowing those in its field of influence to be more aware of their bodies and surroundings’ (A. Gormley, ‘The Impossible Self’, 1988, accessed on 28 September 2021, https://antonygormley.com/resources/essay-item/id/142). Life-sized and freestanding, Construct VI engages with its viewer and their shared environment.
If modernism can at times feel austere, Gormley’s figures are suffused with an uncanny pathos. The linearity of CONSTRUCT VI may seem objective, but the work encourages communion and reflection. By making the body his recurrent subject, Gormley has found an image that traverses cultural and temporal difference. The simplicity of CONSTRUCT VI contains myriad potential histories and feelings, and comprehends the complexities of being in the world. ‘The body is a language before language,’ says Gormley. ‘When made still in sculpture it can be a witness to life’ (A. Gormley, quoted in U. Kittelmann, ed., Total Strangers, exh. cat. Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne 1999, p. 22).