Antony Gormley on the challenge to art from. - The Guardian.
Concerning the religions dimension in my art: The work comes from the same source as the need for religion: wanting to face existence and discover meaning. The work attempts by starting with a real body in real time to face space and eternity. The body - or rather the place that the body occupies is seen as the locus on which those forces act.Antony Gormley's works reflect and embody a tragic paradox. The artist's response to questions of human survival and the meaning of life, they are both passionate and reticent. As with the poetry of Sophocles, currents of tumultuous feeling swirl beneath a serene and composed surface, reflecting a duality inherent in the human condition.Antony Gormley's striking statues that linger in the memory, arranged in the white spaces of the Tate at St Ives, would do the trick beautifully. The ancient art of memory was founded on a deep insight about human cognition - our thinking is fundamentally spatial.
Antony Gormley, in full Antony Mark David Gormley, (born August 30, 1950, London, England), British sculptor and draftsman best known for his work with human forms, which he created chiefly from casts of his own naked body.In these artworks he examined aspects of the human presence in the world, often employing more than one figure placed within a landscape or cityscape.Website of British sculptor Antony Gormley, creator of the Angel of the North, Field for the British Isles, and Quantum Cloud.
Antony Gormley's sculpture constitutes a profound reflection on sculpture and place, understood in the broadest possible sense. 'Place' includes both physical and institutional sites, the cultural location of sculpture among the arts and media as well as its placement in real space.
