The Lehmbruck Museum continued their series ‘Sculpture 21st’ with Antony Gormley. In his monographic presentation in the iconic Glass Hall, Gormley showed one sculpture, 

 (2006), from the ‘Blockworks’ series.

This life-sized sculpture is composed of a number of individual steel blocks, and, by treating the body as a relationship of cells, Gormley has replaced the anatomy of the singular body with an organisation of parts similar to that of buildings within a city. He thus replaces a concern with life-like appearance with the syntax of the city as the place of the collective body. As with many of the later ‘Blockworks’, the individual rectangular masses that make up the form hover at the surface, rarely touching, making a broken silhouette and evoking an entropic disintegration. Its lowered head makes it seem like a universal personification of melancholia and loneliness.

To accompany this exhibition, Antony Gormley spoke about the potential of sculpture in the lecture ‘What Can Sculpture Do?’ at the Lehmbruck Museum on 22 November, 2014.

Lehmbruck Museum

, 2006, variable stainless steel blocks, 173 × 53 × 49 cm. Photograph by Rainer Schlautmann.

Sculpture 21st: Antony Gormley

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