THE GALLERIE DEGLI UFFIZI IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE

ESSERE

A FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION OF WORK BY ANTONYGORMLEY
TO RUN FROM 26 FEBRUARY TO 26 MAY 2019

‘Can an object be the catalyst for new thoughts and behaviours?’ Antony Gormley

This exhibition – which is to be held in the Aula Magliabechiana in Uffizi from 26 February to 26 May 2019 – brings together works of different materials and scales that explore the body in space and the body as space. There are 12 works in the expansive new ground floor gallery, where natural light will play into 12 discrete vaulted spaces defined by six stone columns and no internal walls. Two further works are placed in the context of the historic collection and another is installed on the terrace of the Uffizi. At the core of the show there is a dialogue between two sculptures, Passage and Room, made 35 years apart. Both deal with the space of the body. Passage (2016), a 12 metre-long Corten steel tunnel in human form – allows viewers to enter, while Room (1980), a set of the artist’s clothes cut into a continuous 8 millimetre-wide ribbon expanded into an enclosure 6 metres square, keeps them out. The show is predicated on these two works and the dialogue between stasis and movement: imaginative and actual space. The artist states: “I use the indexical impression of my own living body rather than mimesis to make work that both displaces and encloses, to engage and activate attention.” There are a number of specially made new works in the exhibition, including Veer II (2018), a three-dimensional life-size cast iron evocation of a tense nervous system at the core of the body, and Breathe (2018), a large lead- covered expansion work that applies the cosmic principles of the Big Bang to the singularity of a subjective body. Interaction with the city’s precious cultural heritage, and with the Uffizi in particular, is the prerogative of to two examples of the bodyform Another Time: one is placed amongst the classical sculptures on the piano nobile and the other is installed outdoors on the terrace of the Uffizi, looking out over Piazza della Signoria. A third instance of interaction with the Uffizi’s historic collection takes the shape of a room devoted to dialogue with the Sleeping Hermaphrodite, a Roman copy from the imperial age of a 2nd century BC Hellenistic original resting on a plinth, and the floor-hugging blockwork, Settlement(2005).

Departing from ideas about an exhibition as a space for aesthetic contemplation or the enjoyment of narrative or representation, Essere invites our active participation as connectors between defined objects and open space in which mass and void, dark and light, hard and soft engage the viewer’s presence in space.

ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY
Born in London in 1950, Antony Gormley has had a number of solo shows at venues including Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2018); the Long Museum, Shanghai (2017); National Portrait Gallery, London (2016); Forte di Belvedere, Florence (2015); Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (2014); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (2012); Deichtorhallen Hamburg; State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2010); Hayward Gallery, London (2007); Kunsthalle zu Kiel; MalmöKonsthall (1993); and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (1989). A major solo exhibition of his work will be presented at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in September 2019. His permanent public works include the Angel of the North(Gateshead, England), Another Place (Crosby Beach, England), Exposure(Lelystad, The Netherlands) Chord (MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA). He has also participated in major group shows such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany. Gormley won the Turner Prize in 1994 and has been a member of the Royal Academy since 2003. He was made an Officer of the British Empire in 1997 and knighted in 2014.

Further details can be found on the artist’s website:
http://www.antonygormley.com

Press Office
Opera Laboratori Fiorentini – Civita
Andrea Acampa, tel. 055 290383, cell. 348 1755654, a.acampa@operalaboratori.comGianni Caverni, tel. 055 290383, cell. 347 7818134, g.caverni@operalaboratori.com Tommaso Galligani, cell. 3494299681, t.galligani@operalaboratori.com

LE GALLERIE DEGLI UFFIZI
Piazzale degli Uffizi, 6 50122 Firenze
T +39 055 2388 831 /areastampa uffizimedia@beniculturali.it

Antony Gormley. Essere
solo show 

Gli Uffizi, Aula Magliabechiana
Florence, Italy
Curated by Eike Schmidt and Max Seidel
supported by GALLERIA CONTINUA
www.uffizi.it

Image: ANTONY GORMLEY ‘VEER II’ 2018, Cast iron, 152 x 60 x 30,5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London, © the artist