Exploring the tension between lightness and monumentality in the recent works of Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley (born 1950) is famed for the monumentality of his sculptures, the most famous example of which is the "Angel of the North," built in 1998 in Gateshead, England. For his exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, Gormley presents both large-scale sculptures and works that are comparatively lighter and less declarative of mass and presence. Published for this exhibition, Antony Gormley: For the Time Being examines recent works exploring this tension, such as the Construct series, which range from a standing male figure with his hands at his sides and his head turned, to a cluster of vertical blocks that could be described as post-Constructivist, and recent public commissions such as "Exposure" (2010, executed for a site in the Netherlands) and "Habitat" (2010, erected in Anchorage, Alaska), which also demonstrate this tension of mass in space versus constellated nodes in space.