Antony Gormley

White Cube, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2000.

John Hutchinson et. al., Antony Gormley, London 2000, p. 163, installation view of another work in the edition
Michael Mack, Ed. Anthony Gormley, Göttingen 2007, p. 518, another example from the edition illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is even oxidisation throughout and some light burnishing to the front and the back of the torso. An air bubble that had burst on the joint of the figure’s left foot has been restored by the artist’s studio; a mild steel mix was welded over the area, brought back with a file and treated to encourage rust to develop in keeping with the appearance of the rest of the work.
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‘What is an Insider? An Insider is to the body what memory is to consciousness: a kind of residue, something that is left behind. It is a core rather than a skeleton. It is a way of allowing things that are internal to the body – attitudes and emotions embedded in posture or hidden by gesture – to become revealed. They are equally alien and intimate.’

(Antony Gormley, quoted in ‘Insiders 1999’, John Hutchinson, et al., Antony Gormley, London 2000, p. 160)

Initially modelled to the scale of the artist’s own body, Insider VII is later reduced by two thirds of its total mass. At once imbued with fragility and gravitas, the sculpture evokes an imperturbable impression of strength and durability in time and space. Stripped  bare of its flesh, Insider VII demonstrates not only a sensation of meticulous reduction to the very essence of the body, but also acts as a metaphor for the strength and endurance of human life. The rational loss of most of the body’s actual substance becomes not only a repeated process of felt pain but also leads to a lack of any individually recognisable features of the sculpture. The process of reduction is thus both a highly intimate yet anonymising act. The intimacy is evoked through the fragility of the body’s features and perceived through the delicate nuances of arms, torso and legs. At the same time the absolute reduction to the core obviates any attempt at  individual recognition and therefore transforms the sculpture into a symbol of universality.

 

Conceived in iron, a material also found at the earth’s core, Insider VII is inextricably linked to the very substance of the human environment. Gormley explains: “I see these reduced forms as antennae for a particular kind of resilience that exists within all of us, that allows us to bear suffering but is itself created through painful experience. There is no judgment about this. Their bareness is not the nakedness that reveals the flesh; it is the result of having had the flesh taken away, a loss which is not sentimentalized but accepted. The Insider tries to up the ante between being and nothingness” (Antony Gormley, quoted in 'Insiders 1999’, John Hutchinson, et al., Antony Gormley, London 2000, p. 160). It is this shared history of pain and perseverance that grants Gormley’s sculpture an irrevocably symbolic power, elevating Insider VII from an individual to a representative of mankind.