ANTONY GORMLEY

OPEN BLOCKWORKS, 2014 - 2018 I wanted to open the body up. I had been using absolute masses that are solid and confront you with your own bodily spatial displacement, but another way is to make intersecting cells out of planes that are enclosures but are open enough to invite a speleology of the eye. Another way is a line that interrogates and energises space. I want to enliven the viewer's inquisitiveness but also confront them with their own passage through space and time. I constantly seek a tension between mass and space, open and closed, stability and the potential to fall. They go from very transparent to then being very dense. It's like when you enter a room occupied by a group of people that you haven't met before and you move from one to another, talking to them. Here you can do it in a physical way, circulating around the works. OPEN SWITCH (2016) is probably the most unstable and has the most voids, it is almost abstract and falling. You have to walk around these works in order to assemble them for yourself. They are often twisted, where the centre of gravity is pushed over the edge and then recovered. OPEN GAUGE (2015) is probably the most classic, a riff on the odalisque. In this position, it is completely dense but as you move around it, it disintegrates into cells, it says 'Come, look at me', but OPEN HOME (2014) is very defensive. This dance of open and closed is not just a game of construction, it's also a psychological game.