These massive blockworks are the obverse of the hollow 

: they materialise the darkness found in the 

 interior. In them, the formal purity of Modernist abstraction is put to work to evoke human states of mind. They aim to produce a somatic sense of containment, mirroring sensations caused by the urban environment.

The first twelve works in the series use the same poses cast for 

 (1995), ranging from a low crouching position to squatting, sitting, kneeling and standing – a basic syntax of human postures, some resting on their feet others on their side.

‘How can a cube convey vulnerability? How can a geometric solid, or a network of intersecting nodes, convey something of bodily sensation? The question of our capacity for self-projection into abstract form is not a new one: it animated aesthetic discussion in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries, at the time of the birth of abstraction itself. But it remains the most pressing question for Gormley, now. His recourse to the cube, arguably the most obdurate and least ‘human’ of geometric forms – and his intent to convey expression and feeling through the most minimal of formal means – may seem at times perverse, as if courting difficulty. But this conscious limitation of vocabulary in recent years has – to the contrary – met an expansion of possibility. The work, Gormley is convinced, packs more emotional punch now; it has become ‘more articulate, more revealed’.

Massive Blockworks

, 2012, cast iron, 116 × 44 × 103 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Stump II

, 2012, cast iron, 73 × 44 × 146 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Reign

, 2012, cast iron, 194 × 46 × 32 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Pole II 

, 2011, cast iron, 190 × 40 × 31 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Clasp IV

, 2011, cast iron, 91 × 44 × 73 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Clutch IX

, 2011, cast iron, 76 × 43.5 × 56.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Hold III

, 2011, cast iron, 79 × 45 × 65 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Corner

, 2012, cast iron, 164 × 46 × 45 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Push IV

, 2012, cast iron, 160 × 47 × 63 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Prop

, 2012, cast iron, 60 × 54 × 59 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Grasp II

, 2012, cast iron, 88 × 47 × 57 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Shore

, 2012, cast iron, 142 × 44 × 71 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Subject

, 2012, cast iron, 33.5 × 198.5 × 42.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Relief II

, 2012, cast iron, 49 × 62 × 75 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Retreat

, 2012, cast iron, 25.5 × 66.5 × 196.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Strand

, 2012, cast iron, 135.5 × 67 × 49 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Stretch II

, 2012, cast iron, 58.5 × 120.5 × 69 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Rest II

, 2012, cast iron, 149.5 × 57.5 × 73.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Slump

, 2012, cast iron, 31.5 × 151 × 71.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Ease

, 2012, cast iron, 214.5 × 43 × 36 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Shrive XV

, 2012, cast iron, 167 × 69 × 55 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Clamp

, 2012, cast iron, 220 × 39 × 34 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Massive Blockworks

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