Copyright: © Antony Gormley
Courtesy of the artist and White Cube
Photo: © Stephen White & Co.
Provenance: Donated by the artist and White Cube
British sculptor and Turner Prize winner Antony Gormley (b. 1950 in London) is one of the most important artists of the present day. In his sculptures, installations and public artworks, he investigates the relationship of the human body to its environment. Usually taking his own body as a starting point, he proceeds to transform its recognisable, organic form into abstract and geometric models. The relationship between his body, space and time is thereby key. Speaking about his work, Gormley observes:
“With sculpture, it exists in time. It resists time.
It displaces space. It is not easily assimilated. But if you engage with it, it can provide a place of reflexivity, and for me that’s its primary value.”
Small Rue II is part of the Small Blockworks sculpture series, in which Gormley uses scale to act on the body-consciousness of the viewer. Iron blocks of various sizes sit one on top of the other on the ground. Only when circling the small sculpture does the viewer recognise a crouching figure, composed of pixels that have assumed solid form. This orbiting movement opens up that place of reflexivity where new insights into the self in time and space become possible.
