Antony Gormley on Body, Space, and Survival in Artribune Podcast

British artist Antony Gormley (born 1950 in London) discusses the paradox of human existence through the body in a monologue for Artribune Podcast. He describes his sculptures as 'carapaces' or new skins covering the human body in space, intended to be imagined in darkness as a primordial, otherworldly condition. The recent exhibition 'Lucio Fontana/Antony Gormley' at Negozio Olivetti in Venice, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero and inaugurated during the 59th Venice Biennale, juxtaposes Gormley's work with Fontana's, both exploring a 'cosmological perspective' linking the body to a higher dimension. Gormley states his sculpture 'uses the tangible to stimulate the intelligible,' similar to Fontana's approach of 'confronting the membrane of representation to reveal the darkness of deepest space.' The exhibition spaces designed by Carlo Scarpa contributed to orthogonal short-circuits on multiple levels. In 2022, Imperial College London installed a six-meter-high steel sculpture by Gormley titled 'Alert,' which sparked controversy among students who claimed the ambiguous form resembled a phallic symbol and could damage the college's reputation. Gormley defends the work from a dynamic perspective and addresses sustainability, asking whether humanity can survive without causing further harm to non-human creatures or will cause its own elimination. He also reflects on art's role in society as a means to create a more equitable, shared, and balanced world through self-determination.