April 28, 2022

Antony Gormley in San Gimignano

Until 4 September, the internationally renowned artist's exhibition Body Space Time at Galleria Continua

Galleria Continua presents Body Space Time, a new solo exhibition by the internationally renowned British artist Antony Gormley, which can be visited by appointment until 4 September from Monday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. This exhibition in San Gimignano represents a new step in Gormley's lifelong investigation into the body as place and the structuring of space. Although based on the artist's subjective experience, the works on show call into question the bodies of the viewers and their movements within the gallery.

The exhibition juxtaposes mass and space using the idiom of the body, starting with SPACE, a cloud firmly anchored to the earth made up of a network of interconnected stainless steel elements in dialogue with BODY, a milled solid iron cube weighing two tonnes. At the centre of the exhibition is FRAME II, a house-sized body-space structure made of interconnected aluminium frames, designed to be viewed from the stalls and balcony of the old cinema now converted into a gallery space. In contrast, a bold and heavy pile of cast iron Blockworks will be housed in the cramped labyrinthine cellars of the 14th century building.

For the first time, the artist will be documenting the various stages in the making of his works, from raw state to high finish; castings in a single form, alongside elements that will simply be juxtaposed or stacked on top of each other. In this way, the exhibition will become a theatre of interaction between fixed and mobile, open and closed, mass and space.

Antony Gormley said of the works and materials: "Raw and baked; worked and natural. Iron is the essential material of which this planet is composed. I wanted to celebrate all the qualities that this extraordinarily versatile material offers in terms of construction and material identity. The idea of showing these alternatives of assembling and making sculpture is to engage our bodies in proprioception and an objective evocation of how our bodies relate to the planet as well as to the geometry of our built habitat".

To ensure maximum safety, you must book your visit to the exhibition by filling in the appropriate form available at galleriacontinua.com.

ABOUT ANTONY GORMLEY

Antony Gormley is internationally acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship between the human body and space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical engagement with both his own body and the bodies of others, addressing fundamental questions about the position of human beings in relation to nature and the cosmos. Gormley continually seeks to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which new behaviours, thoughts and feelings can arise.

Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Prize for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and knighted [Sir] by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014 in the traditional round-up of new titles of nobility bestowed on New Year's Eve. He is an honorary member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, as well as an Honorary Doctor of Cambridge University and a Fellow of Trinity College and Jesus College at the same University. He has been a Royal Academician since 2003 and a trustee member of the Board of Trustees of the British Museum since 2007.

On the occasion of the 59. International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia Lucio Fontana and Antony Gormley will confront for the first time the major themes of their research through works on paper and sculptures in a single exhibition conceived and curated by Luca Massimo Barbero that will take place in the spaces of the Negozio Olivetti in Piazza San Marco from 20 April to 27 November 2022.