 were made in order to return to the idea of making pixels physical. They describe both the space of the body and the block, suggesting a coexistence between biological and mineral matter. Where form begins and ends is re-negotiated at the edge with cuts into space as well as into mass.

] are made from a predetermined, rising canon of solid iron blocks, which abstract the human form and cut into air and space at hard right angles. […] The iron forms might have a solid edge, but where the aggregated block that they are attached to ends, and limbs, hands, feet and face begin, is not always clear. Their surfaces erupt unevenly: a disturbed terrain of rising and falling angles and cubes that seem to expand and contract into the spaces the sculptures inhabit. […]

 as ‘materialised pixellations’. The phrase references how the sculptures are created: translated from a digital scan of the artist’s body. Through this process, Gormley’s body is dematerialized and reduced to lines of code, then cast in solid iron, to reassert a bodily presence. […] Gormley’s 

 both insist on the body’s physicality and suggest our ability to transcend from corporeality into pure information, while also asserting that, on our return, our self will manifest itself permanently altered, abstracted to the point of being barely recognisable.

On a shelf in Gormley’s London studio sits a block of iron pyrite, in which a crystallographic lump turns into naturally formed, interconnected cubes with gleaming-sharp edges. Side-by-side with such geometric, geologic substances, the isometric silhouettes and surface terrains of the 

 can be read ecologically, evoking cell growth and elemental transformation. The way their metal-human forms dip in and out of legibility is reminiscent of naturally occurring mutations or biomorphs, as much as it is of digital formations.’

Aggregate Blockworks

, 2018, cast iron, 189 × 58 × 71.4 cm. Photograph by Stephen White & Co.

Stack

, 2018, cast iron, 176.2 × 71.8 × 64.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White & Co.

Fall II

, 2018, cast iron, 69.3 × 75.7 × 67.1 cm. Installation view, White Cube Mason‘s Yard. Photograph by Oak Taylor-Smith.

Hold

, 2018, cast iron, 69.3 × 75.7 × 67.1 cm. Photograph by Stephen White & Co.

, 2018, cast iron, 105.6 × 62.3 × 87.4 cm. Photograph by Stephen White & Co.

Found

, 2018, cast iron, 105.6 × 62.3 × 87.4 cm. Installation view, White Cube Mason‘s Yard, 2019. Photograph by Oak Taylor-Smith.

Found 

, 2018, cast iron, 210.7 × 62 × 57.3 cm. Photograph by Stephen White & Co.

Fall

, 2018, cast iron, 137.5 × 52.5 × 75 cm. Installation view, White Cube Mason‘s Yard. Photograph by Oak Taylor-Smith.

, 2019, cast iron, 91.1 × 148.6 × 45.8 cm. Photograph by Stephen White & Co.

Aggregate Blockworks

Related content

In Formation

Somatic Terrain: Topographies of Self and Space

Essere