Antony Gormley and Tadao Ando Team Up for Meditative Sculpture Cave
Now on view as a part of Gormley’s ‘Drawing on Space’ at Museum SAN.
Summary
- British artist Antony Gormley is presenting Drawing on Space at Museum SAN in South Korea through November 30.
- At the heart of the 48-piece showcase is Ground, an architectural intervention conceived in collaboration with esteemed Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
- Ground, which takes the form of a meditative concrete cave, houses seven cast-iron figures from Gormley’s seminal Blockworks series.
For Antony Gormley, sculptor is not a single, idealized figure, but means of understanding space and form through a shared field of perception. The acclaimed British artist is currently presenting Drawing on Space, his largest exhibition in South Korea at Museum SAN. Unfolding across all three galleries of the museum’s Cheongjo wing, the exhibition gathers an impressive array of 48 works, alongside a newly-unveiled architectural intervention by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, at its heart.
Drawing on Space continues Gormley’s decades-long investigation into the human body as both subject and site, looking to the body as a porous, responsive form to explore how we sense, navigate and ultimately, embody space. This inquiry finds its most ambitious expression in Ground, a subterranean dome housed beneath the museum’s flower garden.
The structure evokes the architectural spirit of the Pantheon and the similar meditative flair seen in Ando’s Space of Light. The 25-meter-wide chamber features a sole oculus that casts light across the space. Inside, seven cast-iron figures from Gormley’s Blockworks series appear seated, crouching and standing with one final figure positioned in the center of the aperture, standing outside against the backdrop of the distant, forested mountains.
Additional highlights of the exhibition include “Liminal Field,” where forms of steel bubbles explore the transient nature of bodies, and the aluminum bloom-like rings of “Orbit Field II.” Works on paper complement Gormley’s sculptural practice as contemplative studies on light, mass and interiority.
The aim is to let “physical and imaginative space come together,” Gormley explained. “The works will activate rather than occupy space, and explore the enclosures of architecture and the body as sensate.”
Drawing on Space is now on view in Wonju through November 30.
Museum SAN
260 Oak valley 2-gil,
Jijeong-myeon,
Wonju-si, Gangwon-do,
South Korea
