Antony Gormley: Human

From the 26th of April, Florence will host the work of Antony Gormley (b.1950, London), one of the most acclaimed sculptors working today. The exhibition Human follows on from the success of exhibitions by Zhang Huan, which marked the reopening of the Forte di Belvedere in 2013 and Giuseppe Penone in 2014. Curated by Sergio Risaliti and Arabella Natalini, Human brings together over one hundred works by Gormley in the inner rooms of the villa, the bastions, the staircases and the terraces, to occupy every side of the 16th century fortress with its extraordinary views over the city and the surrounding hills.

The exhibition includes the artist’s seminal installation Critical Mass, an “anti-monument evoking all the victims of the 20th century”. The work was originally conceived for a disused tram depot in Vienna in 1995, to “activate the whole building and make it a site of reflection on the dark side of German history”. On view on the lower terrace of the Forte, Critical Mass acquires a new potency in relation to a renaissance city, the history of humanism and the continuing and ever-present relationship between money, militarism and power. The more naturalistic figures of Critical Mass , derived from moulds taken directly from the artist’s body, are in dialogue with recent works collectively known as ‘Blockworks’, which reveal human anatomy through architectural volumes. Each sculpture is positioned to resonate with the scale and mass of the Forte.

This major exhibition, in which the human figure is redefined, finds a “natural” home in Florence, the city in which, in the 15th and 16th centuries, artists such asDonatello, Michelangelo, Baccio Bandinelli and Cellini devoted their energies to studying the depiction of the “ideal” man in relation to architecture. Human renews and confirms the city’s determination to embrace the present, seeking a crucial interaction between the Florence of the Renaissance and the city of today, in a close dialogue between sculpture and new ways of conceiving man’s environment.

The show is organised by Mus.e with the support of Galleria Continua and White Cube.

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