ARTISTS
Antony Gormley: Critical Mass
This autumn, the Mus茅e Rodin welcomes British artist Antony Gormley. For over forty years, Gormley has explored the relationship of the human body to space through a critical engagement with his own body and, more recently, through examining the relationship of the body to the built environment.
Titled Critical Mass, this exhibition at the Mus茅e Rodin will activate all areas of the museum, including the temporary exhibition space, gardens, Marble Galerie and Hotel Biron. Key works from across Gormley鈥檚 career will enter into dialogue with Rodin鈥檚 own sculptures, inviting visitors to reflect on the two sculptors and their shared investment in asking what the body offers sculpture as a subject, object and reflexive tool.
At the centre of this exhibition is Critical Mass II (1995), an installation comprising sixty life-sized sculptures that punctuate the museum鈥檚 temporary exhibition space and garden. In this major work, the artist isolates twelve fundamental positions unique to the human body, casts each five times and then places them in different configurations, sometimes to contradictory and absurd effect. Crawling, squatting, kneeling and standing, the installation will unfold in the garden with a line of the twelve positions that ends at Rodin鈥檚 The Gates of Hell. Inside, a dense cluster of cast iron bodies piled in a heap will look as if they have been toppled onto the ground. Other bodies will be pressed against walls and hang suspended from the ceiling. For Gormley, 鈥榯he work references the materiality of sculpture and our dependency on the materiality of the body, both being subject to position, context and jeopardy鈥�.
Recommended for you
This autumn, the Mus茅e Rodin welcomes British artist Antony Gormley. For over forty years, Gormley has explored the relationship of the human body to space through a critical engagement with his own body and, more recently, through examining the relationship of the body to the built environment.
Titled Critical Mass, this exhibition at the Mus茅e Rodin will activate all areas of the museum, including the temporary exhibition space, gardens, Marble Galerie and Hotel Biron. Key works from across Gormley鈥檚 career will enter into dialogue with Rodin鈥檚 own sculptures, inviting visitors to reflect on the two sculptors and their shared investment in asking what the body offers sculpture as a subject, object and reflexive tool.
At the centre of this exhibition is Critical Mass II (1995), an installation comprising sixty life-sized sculptures that punctuate the museum鈥檚 temporary exhibition space and garden. In this major work, the artist isolates twelve fundamental positions unique to the human body, casts each five times and then places them in different configurations, sometimes to contradictory and absurd effect. Crawling, squatting, kneeling and standing, the installation will unfold in the garden with a line of the twelve positions that ends at Rodin鈥檚 The Gates of Hell. Inside, a dense cluster of cast iron bodies piled in a heap will look as if they have been toppled onto the ground. Other bodies will be pressed against walls and hang suspended from the ceiling. For Gormley, 鈥榯he work references the materiality of sculpture and our dependency on the materiality of the body, both being subject to position, context and jeopardy鈥�.
Artists on show
What's on nearby
