Antony Gormley Horizon Field KUB Projekt

08 09
English
The Kunsthaus Bregenz and the British artist Antony Gormley (born
in 1950) are realizing a unique project in the mountains of Vorarlberg.
Horizon Field will be the first art project of its kind erected in the
mountains and the largest landscape inter vention in Austria to date.
Horizon Field consists of 100 life­size, solid cast iron figures of the
human body spread over an area of 150 square kilometers in the
communities of Mellau, Schoppernau, Schröcken, Warth, Mittelberg,
Lech, Klösterle, and Dalaas. The work forms a horizontal line at 2,039
meters above sea level. This height has no specific metaphorical or
thematic relevance in the placement of the figures. It is an altitude
that is readily accessible but, at the same time, lies beyond the realm
of ever yday life. Some of the figures will be installed in places one
can hike to or ski past in the winter. Others will be unapproachable
though visible from certain vantage points. The works are neither
representations (statues) nor symbols, but represent the place where
a human being once was, and where any human being could be.
Horizon Field engages the physical, perceptual, and imaginative
responses of anyone coming within its relational field. Over the 2
years during which this installation will be in place, the work will be
exposed to the elements, to different lighting conditions, and to the
changing seasons, thus enabling constantly new perceptions and
impressions.
Horizon Field
Antony Gormley’s radical actuality as an artist derives from his
desire to place an apparently completed classical theme, the
human figure, into a new, universal context. Since the 1980s, when
Gormley created the foundations for his oeuvre with figures cast
from his own body in lead and iron, his principal concern has been
to open up new artistic and social realms through a wide range of
strategies.
Going beyond the mere search for a further chapter in aesthetic
investigations of form, Gormley is constantly preoccupied with the
role of the human being–as an individual or mass and as a social
being–and with its simultaneous role as object and subject represented
by his sculptures. By reducing the human form to a trace or
index, Gormley is able to release his figures from the bounds of traditional
sculpture, set up on plinths in self-contained isolation and
in accordance with their perceived function. He exposes his figures
to modern perceptions of life, art, and space. Chief among these
are a critical engagement with mass as a constitutive formal and
emotional element of sculpture, an exploration of the sculptural
and existential significance of space in contained and extended
modes and, finally, the crucial issue (of special significance in the
artist’s landscape projects) of human jeopardy and self-assertion
in the world. Gormley’s art revolves around these three concerns,
each of which varies in importance from work to work but is always
present, if only latently.
KUB­Projekt Antony Gormley