Vessel, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano
First solo exhibition at Galleria Continua, San Gimignano.
The exhibition includes a major new large-scale work entitled Vessel, which also acts as a trait de liaison between the exhibition project at San Gimignano and Gormley’s project for Galleria Continua’s venue in France. At Le Moulin, his investigation of the different variables in the relationship between the human body and living space is articulated in Space Station, a vast 23 tonne sculpture enterable by a small passage in the side of the work. Vessel is made out of 39 interconnecting rectangular steel boxes that reverse the Renaissance trope of the city in the form of a man, by making a man in the form of a city. This recumbent anti-monument, perhaps seen at first as an off-kilter work by Donald Judd, now provokes greater questions about the social and inspirational role of sculpture and its potential to provide direct bodily experience.
Photograph: Vessel, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy. Installation view. Photograph by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO STUDIO.