If you are not prepared to expose yourself, you will have nothing to communicate. I don’t want the work to be rhetorical or dominating. I want it to be direct. The body is a receiver, an acceptor of conditions. It can also transmit a sense of internal condition. Antony Gormley
Curator: Michael Tarantino
If you are not prepared to expose yourself, you will have nothing to
communicate. I don’t want the work to be rhetorical or dominating. I want
it to be direct. The body is a receiver, an acceptor of conditions. It can
also transmit a sense of internal condition.
(Antony Gormley, Interview with Udo Kittelmann for the catalogue Total
Strangers, published by the Kolnischer Kunstverein, 1997)
CGAC is delighted to present the first survey in Spain of the work of Turner prize winning British artist Antony
Gormley. One of a small number of sculptors who have radically re-visioned the place of the body in contemporary
art, Gormley has inserted the body into the expanded field of post-modern practice in works such as
Another Place, Allotment and Field. He has shown his work internationally for two decades in group shows
such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta 8, and in solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, the Serpentine
Gallery, Tate St. Ives and White Cube.
This show, curated by Michael Tarantino, will be a survey of his work from 1978 to the present, charting
his exploration of his own body as a starting point from which to explore the relationships between bodies
and the contexts which they inhabit. Gormley’s sculptures are above all, "direct", and it is this directness
which forms the basis of their relationship with the viewer as he/she seeks to situate these forms, to use his
or her own body as a "receiver."
In a sense, Gormley’s work can be divided into those works which denote the human figure, such as Critical
Mass, his 1999 installation at the Royal Academy in London, and those which connote the figure, such as
Room (1980) and Cord (1991). In these connotative works, it is the trace of the human presence that dominates.
These works will be included in the exhibition at CGAC, together with pieces from all the major series such
as the Insiders, Quantum Cloud and Allotment. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue featuring
an essay by Professor Lisa Jardine, a text by the curator of the show Michael Tarantino and an interview by
Enrique Juncosa as well as an artist’s book with texts and drawings by Antony Gormley.
CGAC
CENTRO GALEGO
DE ARTE
CONTEMPORÃNEA
Hall, Ground Floor, Double Space
Rúa Ramón del Valle Inclán s/n
15704 Santiago de Compostela
Tel. 981 546 619
Fax 981 546 625