Antony Gormley: Hold opening soon at Kiasma

Kiasma presents the most comprehensive exhibition to date in the Nordic countries by Antony Gormley.

Hold will be the museum’s major exhibition for 2027. It presents a comprehensive overview of Gormley’s oeuvre, tracing the evolution of his practice from the 1970s to the present.

The human body and its relationship to space have been central to Gormley’s practice throughout his long career. In Hold, he invites us to consider how architecture affects us, exploring the ways the body conforms to its constraints, whether art can challenge its authority and how imagination or perception can extend the body’s limits.

Hold animates the unique spaces of Steven Holl’s Kiasma by including whole room installations and individual sculptures that exist between the condition of architecture and the body. A series of ‘Body Buildings’ constructed entirely of cardboard invite visitors to crawl their way through while other works like Clearing and Run prompt them to bow down, step over, or circle around them. Light, a fundamental element of Holl’s original vision for Kiasma, also plays a central role in Gormley’s exhibition with natural light flooding the galleries through the large skylights.

‘Gormley’s works insist on physical encounter. At a time when work, social interaction, and even the consumption of culture are increasingly taking place on digital platforms, it feels rewarding to slow down and be genuinely present. When you crawl inside a sculpture, you inevitably become aware of yourself and your body,’ says Kiira Miesmaa, Director of Kiasma.

‘I want this exhibition to engage with sculpture not just as something that occupies space, but as the medium in which we move, breathe and feel,’ says Antony Gormley.

Photograph: Clearing VIII, 2022, 12.7 mm square section 16 swg aluminium tube, dimensions variable. Installation view, Ground, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, the Netherlands, 2022. Photograph by Antoine van Kaam.