Antony Gormley at the Uffizi. To be
from Tuesday 26 February to 26 May at the Uffizi the exhibition of the great British artist
The new, spacious room on the ground floor of the museum will host twelve works by the artist. Two sculptures will be placed in the rooms of the historical collection, while a third will be installed on the terrace of the Uffizi, above the Loggia dei Lanzi.
A 12-meter-long black steel tunnel is the largest work ever seen in the Uffizi. Traces the human figure, in which to dive to experience moments of pure restlessness, pure bewilderment. It is Passage, maxi metal installation by Antony Gormley: it is one of the main works of the exhibition dedicated to the English artist, Being, welcomed in the Magliabechiana Hall of the Uffizi of Florence from 26 February to 26 May, and precisely to this creation the supremacy of the greatest work ever hosted in the Gallery of Statues and Paintings rests.
On show, in addition to Passage, there is a selection of Gormley's sculptures, made of different materials and dimensions, which explore the themes of the body in space and of the body as space.
Central to the exhibition is the dialogue between Passage and Room, two sculptures created thirty-five years apart from each other. Both deal with the issue of body space: Passage (2016) is a real 12 meter long human steel tunnel that can be visited by visitors; and Room (1980) - a series of artist's clothes cut into a continuous 8 mm wide band that defines a 6-by-6-square-meter fence, not accessible to the public. It is therefore a dialogue by contrast between these two works, the contrast between stasis and movement, between imaginative and real space.
The exhibition then presents several new works created for the occasion, including Veer II (2018), a three-dimensional cast iron evocation of a tense nervous system at the center of the body, life size, and Breathe (2018), a work large expansive covered with lead that applies the cosmic principles of the Big Bang to the singularity of a subjective body.
The relationship with the precious cultural heritage of the city, and with the Uffizi in particular, is entrusted to Another Time, exhibited among the classical sculptures in the gallery and to Event Horizon, located on the Uffizi terrace, overlooking Piazza della Signoria. Finally, we wanted to find a third relationship with the historical collection of the Uffizi through a room dedicated to dialogue between the sleeping Hermaphrodite, a Roman copy of the Imperial age from a Hellenistic original of the 2nd century BC. resting on a base, and the Settlement block (2005) that embraces the floor instead.
Moving away from the idea of the exhibition as a space for aesthetic contemplation or for the enjoyment of narration or representation, Being urges our active participation as connectors between defined objects and open spaces in which mass and emptiness, darkness and light, hard and soft involve the presence of the spectator in space.