One of the best show of the year :
Antony Mark David Gormley is currently one of the most famous living sculptor in Britain. His best known art work include the Angel of the North, in Gateshead and Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool. But this year he has been making a major step in the history of art with his "Event Horizon and Blind Light" shows, in and around the Hayward Gallery, in London.
The exhibition featured a series of brand new monumental works specially conceived for The Hayward’s distinctive spaces, including one of the largest ever urban public art commissions, "Event Horizon", which featured sculptural casts of the artist’s body on rooftops and public walkways across central London, dramatically transforming the city skyline.
These new works, including a spectacular series of suspended figures created in light-infused webs of steel, were shown alongside a selection of works from the last three decades.
A series of talks, events and guided exhibition tours complemented Antony Gormley's exhibit. From the artist in discussion with author Will Self to family stop-motion film workshops to a guided tour with psychoanalyst Darian Leader, there are several ways to get into his world.
Antony Gormley took the visitor on board in a single experiment/experience through various spaces specifically made for the exhibition. “Blind Light”, made of glass, was cold, wet and vaporous and was therefore an amazing experience which inspired blurred and confusing feelings. It completely disorientates the visitor.
“Space Station” the huge sculpture, perilously inclined and dominating all the space, invites us to “a voyage through various types of spaces” to which the body is the starting point. Another work not to be missed is the outdoor “Vent Horizon” where Antony Gormley laid out thirty of his sculptures on the roofs of visible public buildings of the terrace of the gallery for a sumptuous effect, as mentionned before.
Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950 and studied archaeology, anthropology, history of art. He received the Turner Prize in 1994 and the South Bank Prize for Visual Arts in 1999. Through its studies on the meditation vipassana in India, his works are meant to cope with the questions of inner research. The artist uses his body as a tool, a medium as well as a subject to create sculptures having for goal to answer these questions.
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