Antony Gormley has been invited to exhibit a group of large-scale sculptures in the same venue where the 2023 Salzburg Festival will get underway. Five sculptures from the artist’s ‘Tankers’ series will be displayed in the Kollegienkirche for two weeks. These steel sculptures are derived from the human body and transform its mass into ever-expanding dark voids held within hermetically sealed tanks.

The sculptures are arranged in a row and are turned to face the viewer as they enter. Are they bowing to God, or hunched over, paying respect to the earth?

The dark figures pose a visually striking contrast to the airy ‘white church’ designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, which was built between 1696 and 1707. These looming dark presences encroach upon the spiritual domain and carve out a space for themselves.

, Kollegienkirche, Salzburg, 2023. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London · Paris · Salzburg · Seoul. Photograph by Ulrich Ghezzi.