Saturday 11^th July, 2009 saw the opening of the Antony Gormley solo in Bregenz, Austria. A physical monograph across four floors, spanning over 16 years of his career, it is his biggest retrospective in Europe to date. And, as I am currently living in the country, it was one that I refused to miss.

I sat opposite Peter Zumthor’s acclaimed Kunsthaus in the adjacent coffee house, trying to pass a few minutes before the doors opened. All the time watching Bregenz’s great and good assemble. There was hubbub, an eager anticipation and everyone was feeling a little more important than usual. When I could not wait a minute longer, I left my unfinished drink and crossed the square towards the hazy cube, a shower of shingles glowing golden in the evening sun like frozen sheets hacked from the Bodensee behind.

‘Body and Fruit’ (1991/93) occupies the foyer. Two bulbous lumps, which could originally have been a number of varieties of fruit and are now expanded beyond recognition to many times their natural size, hover a few centimetres over the Terrazzo floor. Their mass renders them planet like, but they are still immediately identifiable as fruit, perhaps even juicy despite their gross size and inedible material. This play with scale, quality of finish and absence of explicit purpose are hallmarks of the assembled work. But each is quietly purposeful.

Above is ‘Allotment II’ (1996), the spatial representation of 300 inhabitants of Malmö, whose “intimate measurements” were transferred into hollow concrete shells, each just big enough to hold the sitter. In his opening speech Antony talked of mnemonics, memories made physical and this work is just that. Like a photograph, it records an event. Surely an exciting, strange and memorable one for the subjects and as one walks around this can be felt. There is an atmosphere of a village fete, the cubes stand roughly on a grid but there seem to be family groups and more open spaces where visitors gather to talk. The overall composition is indiscernible; you can only glimpse islands in a united party. You can walk between them, stopping when you meet a giant or someone roughly your size and gaze into their vacant mouths, perhaps imagining the person whose body gave rise to the form, but you imagine them in a parallel space, far away and free, not imprisoned inside.

On the third level is ‘Clearing V’ (2009), a twelve kilometre looping coil of aluminium tubing. Unlike the previous installation, whose only clue in the stairwell was the gasp of the person in front of you, it reaches right into the landing at the top of the stair. You are forced to enter it, climbing over the limbs and ducking through the gaps. There was a warning that the dyed aluminium would rub off black onto your clothes if you brushed it but the gallery goers were risking their best. One woman was even crawling, perhaps having found herself trapped. This work is unapologetically artificial, no attempt is made to bring an aspect of ‘realism’ or naturalness. Nevertheless, a familiar parallel world is conjured, or at least room was left for one. I recalled rummaging through a thicket near my home in Cumbria which was maintained by one of the village elders, a farmer and a painter. It’s a dow spot or ‘enchanted spring’ a mixture of depthless bog and native trees woven between wild orchid hybrida. Despite appearances there is something common in spirit.

Many people were complaining of claustrophobia by now. The absence of vistas and the heady combination of art and architecture was intense, almost painfully so. But the final floor was something of a release. It is the most light, not having any concrete overhead and you feel you have worked your way through to the clouds.

‘Critical Mass II’ (1995) has found a fitting home here. As I walked around I pondered on what might be inferred from this arrangement of all but androgynous figures. Should I recognise statues as specific characters? I decided not but there is certainly allegory present, perhaps something about society. The installation is composed like a painting, a great one. Somewhere off centre a heap of stacked bodies lie. Others range off from it or hang solo, thinking, looking, rebelling or in some way stretching themselves. Some obey gravity others defy it by sitting on the walls, not by hanging. There is even a group in free fall, a squadron of dive bombers, noble and sleek. None of the body’s forms acknowledges its neighbours nor are they wrought with any expression. Any communication, in the conventional sense is therefore limited to the arrangement, the rest must be imagined. They are ridged and bear, I also noticed that their feet were cast flat soled, i.e. in contact with the floor, like Greek plasters casts, even when the figures are not standing. Many are repeated, but each is deployed in a new way gaining a new meaning from the circumstance.

On close inspection of the heap I imagined the figures self-aware, aware of their position and even that of their neighbours in relation to them. And if that position was uncomfortable they stoically bore it in a self-contained manner. Although they seemed to acknowledge each other to a limited degree, they remain unable to truly understand each other, they just focus on their own private experience. You want them to talk. However these anonymous figures are open for interpretation and as Antony said, we viewers are the ‘subject of the works’, which remain objects, essentially empty, it is ‘we’ who interpret them and who are altered or not. When you have had enough and the elevator doors close this room off to you, containing it, a single seated thinker faces you across the room and you can be sure he will not be moving.

The Antony Gormley Solo is running until October, so if you’ve been meaning to visit the Bregenz Kunsthaus, now is the perfect time to do so. You can fly into Zurich which is only a couple of ours west or a number of closer airports. Alternatively get on your old 125 and drive down the Rhine.
www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at/

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