SURVEY: Antony Gormley
- Democracy Chain
- 15 hours ago
- 3 min read
by John Zotos
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
Continuing through January 4, 2026
Over the last forty-five years British sculptor Antony Gormley (b. 1950) has remained a consistently major figure on an international level. His work centers on a critical investigation of bodies in space and how we, as human beings, seek to share and expand our perception beyond the confines of our own bodies.
“SURVEY: Antony Gormley” brings together sixteen sculptures on loan with two pieces from the collection, along with models from the artist’s studio that represent sixty projects, some unrealized. These, in turn, are augmented by his workbooks, a collection of drawings and ideas going back to the 70’s that together form a kind of Gormley “codex.”
The earliest works find Gormley trailing on the heels of the “new figuration” movement. Both “Three Places” (1983) and “Field” (1984) are examples of his fully recognizable male, free-standing figures based on casts of his own body, from a period when his career first took off. Using a meditative technique learned during his time in India, Gormley would stay still for hours inside the plaster until it was cut away and used to create these lead-coated figures.
On the outside they are anonymous, everyman likenesses without the slightest hint of portraiture. On a conceptual level, their inside is an exact replica of their maker at that time, so the pieces speak to an interior identity that interacts with the space of the world surrounding them through an exterior barrier that acts as a translation device. The space around Gormley’s sculptures and how people interact with them is his main concern. In “Three Places” three figures, one lying down, one supine, and one standing, each face the same direction and look toward the sky. They beckon us to ponder a place beyond the space they occupy.
In the balancing act titled “Field” the arms of a standing figure become an eighteen-foot wingspan. The elongated arms reach for either end of the gallery. The hands are raised upward like fins, sustaining the figures’ position with a strong sense of precarity that amplifies the anxious feeling of reduced stability.
As his career progressed Gormley always held to the figure. When it seems to disappear one can find it hidden within an abstracted, fractal-induced set of wires as in “Drift VI” (2010), or in the fascinating “Quantum Cloud XX (Tornado)” (2000). Stainless steel “T”-shaped bars read like a whirlwind of pins through which a human form is just discernible.
In “Shift” (2023) the figure lies on the ground, only this time Gormley used blocks of concrete mixed with fibers to create a cuboidal body, perhaps a modern version of Cubism. It looks like it’s trying to do a stomach crunch; the head and feet sections are off the ground as it balances on its central backside.
In a compelling piece done specifically for this exhibition, “Implicate IV” (2024), Gormley uses Cor-ten steel bands that radiate from a central axis. They proceed on a ninety-degree register to circumscribe an elaborate geometry that conceals a figure in the center. The artist refers to the steel strips as “ribbons” that extend the figure outward into the space of the gallery. This newest piece aesthetically ties the exhibition back to the earliest works. As throughout the exhibition, the work reveals Gormley’s consistent concern with our physical bodies and the spaces we occupy within the social sphere, where relationships are formed and meaning is established.
John Zotos is an art critic and essayist based in Dallas.
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