Test Sites: Antony Gormley, White Cube, Mason's Yard, London

// June 4th, 2010 // b-scene // b-uncut

Got down to White Cube Mason’s Yard for a new exhibition, ‘Test Sites’ by Antony Gormley last night. The artist has created a major new site-specific installation and a new series of cast iron blockwork sculptures. Let me recommend it to all of you. As always Antony Gormley pierces the soul with anthropomorphic candor. I’m still pulsating with excitement from the experience. God I love that Angel of the North guy!

Downstairs a large series of 15 curious glowing and interlocking grids fill a dark room. The blue architecture creates a peaceful ambient, a meditative solitude and the 30 or so people allowed to view it at any one time have the freedom to weave amongst all its tranquillity. This interaction forces you to duck and creep, careful not to trip,  forever re-analysing the unfamiliar framework. All dispersing an equal gleam; the bars decidedly blend into one another forming infinite 2D images.

Unexpectedly hot high-wattage lamps viciously interrogate you suddenly shocking your vision, heating your skin. In unison we uncontrollably cry out as our whole being must adjust to this harsh exposing environment. Innately everyone flees the once cosy and now dictating structure. Surrounded by white walls the construction is barely visible but its presence is heavy and dominating.

Soon enough the paint is charged and the soothing period resumes. Breathing Room III is a potent journey through space and time. It emphasises our day to day interactions with these two elements and sparks wondrous tangents for the mind. This all for just £600,000!

These sculptures are the artist’s further investigation of the human body and its relationship to the built world. Classically-Gormley-rusted figures with unnaturally extended, block-body parts use a construct language of stacking, propping and cantilever to imply a tension which represents our urban-bound human condition. Poetry in balance and erosion.

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