Antony Gormley

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

Rennes, La Criée Halle d'Art Contemporain, Man Made Man, 1987
New York, Hirshl & Adler Modern, Lead, 1987

Hans Pietsch, 'Er nimmt Mass am eigenen Körper', ART, March 1993
Exhibition Catalogue, Stade, Landschaftsverband der ehemaligen Herzogtümer Bremen und Verden, Follow Me, 1997
Michael Mack, Ed., Antony Gormley, Göttingen 2007, p. 507, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality tends slightly more towards green. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are a small number of scattered faint and shallow scratches to the surface. There is some unobtrusive and light oxidation to the lead which is inherent t the ageing of the material.
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Vision is an attempt to objectify insight, merging the body with its double, neither dominant, both participatory. It suggests that the bilateralism inherent in the body (the two hemispheres of the brain, the twin eyes, ears, nostrils, lungs, kidneys, arms, legs etc) is evidence of the need for division in order to create unity. This is a double case, echoing mitosis or non-sexual reproduction which celebrates the darkness of the body (the place you are when you close your eyes) as a place of power. I want you to think about the hermetic inner space of the work. I hope the work expresses the power of a fusion with this space.

Can the act of seeing be the subject? Can seer and seen be united? Can one fall into the field of sight and find it fits perfectly? The other side calls in the dark mirror of the night, the endless sea of consciousness, the shadow, the echo, the reflection. The myth of Narcissus mistakes the encounter with the not-self as the fascination with self. The task is to return to where we began and discover the other in the home we called ours.

Antony Gormley

Vision is a superb example of Antony Gormley’s iconic early sculpture, a brilliantly conceived celebration of the human form as well as a study in contact and interaction. Part of an entire series of double bodycase works created between 1987 and 1989, Vision features a mirrored replication of a single corporeality - a single hermetically sealed entity of harmonic doubling. Whilst the majority of the dual bodycase sculptures face away from each other, as though straining to assert their independence, Vision glorifies the opposite sensation, with the figure evoking unity and total harmony. The result is a moving meditation on the concept of bilateralism and organic duality: an elegant response to the phenomena of human connections and engagement.

Gormley’s early bodycase sculptures were created through an unprecedented level of attention to craft and form: fabricated from casts of the sculptor’s own body. Plastic covering was applied over the whole body, leaving only a small hole for the mouth; plaster of Paris was then uniformly applied to the entirety of the plastic and left to set. Once set, the plaster form was carefully removed in sections from the living body beneath, creating an almost featureless ‘skeleton’ upon which sheets of lead could be beaten into shape in order to encase the entire body. The painstaking process leads to sculptures of graceful proportions and profound beauty: moving recreations of the human form in all its extraordinary complexity.

Gormley’s career has been dominated by his investigations into space as occupied by the human form and his attempts to push the boundaries of sculpture beyond its traditional limitations. Eckhard Schneider argues that Gormley’s plans and ideas are “universal in scope. He engages critically with human issues, with people as individuals, as members of collectives, as social beings and objects, and he examines them in relation to space and nature. His overriding concerns… are social and philosophical” (Eckhard Schneider, ‘In and Out’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Bregenz, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Antony Gormley, 2009, n.p.). Vision brilliantly encompasses the latter concept: the philosophical ideals behind the piece are suggested through the presence of a vacuum within the cast of the body itself, ensuring that empty space - air, as key media - becomes an integral part of the work. Ultimately, Vision is a masterpiece of astonishing technical complexity: an investigation into the potential limits of sculptural form, created by one of the most brilliant and innovative sculptors of the Twentieth Century.