Schenkung Sammlung Hoffmann: Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley in the Hall of Anquities

A human-shaped case seals a compressed dark volume of air within. The eyes of the figure are closed, suggesting an awareness of this inner space that the artist calls ‘the darkness of the body’. The work’s insulating skin is formed of lead plates that have been beaten over a fibreglass-reinforced plaster mould – an indexical impression of the artist’s body. The plates are held together by vertical and horizontal solder seams that act like latitude and longitude lines over the body. „Learning to See III“ is an invitation for viewers to use the work reflexively and become aware of the body’s dark internal space that has no objects, no edge and the quality of infinite extension.

Exhibition Site Semperbau am Zwinger

DATES 20/03/2024—16/09/2024

The cast iron work „Under my Skin“ is also derived from the artist‘s body, however, this time the body’s mass has been reduced by 12.5 mm across its surface. The outer end of thousands of steel pins, each 12.5 mm long, express the body as potential. Having previously made lead works that are hermetic voids, „Under my Skin“ is one of the artist’s first works that render the inner darkness of the body as mass. The body is presented as a provisional but highly sensitive zone of interaction.

**Exhibition view in the Hall of Anquities in the Semperbau**

Both works show the artist’s continual investigation into the body as a transformative zone with immense potential, whether that be the unknowable depths of darkness contained within or an energy that radiates out. In the Hall of Antiquities, "Learning to See III" encounters Venus with portrait head, and so-called Lucilla (around 160/70 AD).

The Schenkung Sammlung Hoﬀmann enters contemporary works into a dialogue with objects from the various museums of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, thus opening up new perspectives and levels of meaning for both the contemporary and the historical exhibits.