Review

ANTONY GORMLEY
HORIZON FIELD HAMBURG

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Hall for Contemporary Art 27 April — 9 September 2012

British artist Antony Gormley has developed a spectacular new installation especially for the large Deichtorhalle: »Horizon Field Hamburg«, which will be on view during the documenta. Between April 27 and September 9, 2012, visitors will enter the north hall of the Deichtorhallen to be confronted by a space that is almost 2,500 sq. m. in size, nearly 19 meters high, and virtually empty. »It is critical that the experience of the space is utterly clear and that in there we see a void, clean building re-imagined as a kind of gymnasium for mind and body,« says Gormley.

In this open space a vast, black, reflective structure will float 7.4 metres above the floor, inviting adventure. The suspended, slightly oscillating platform exploits the structural potential and architectural context of the Deichtorhallen building, now over a century old, taking visitors into a new spatiotemporal matrix. The space below the work will be in shadow, sparsely illuminated by light that comes from the skylights far above. Here visitors can tarry and listen to the steps and voices of the invisible people above them. Every quality of the day or night, every sound and accident of light will become part of the work itself. »There is a double bind here. We have a real choice of how we wish to participate,« Gormley explains. »We can stay in an underworld or climb skywards. Both scenarios put the human subject into a dynamic position of jeopardy.«

»Horizon Field Hamburg« will provoke an experience of re-orientation and re-connection with walking, feeling, hearing and seeing. Individual and group experience will be mediated through vibration, sound and reflection. The entire project could be seen as a horizontal painting stretched taut in space, on which the visitor becomes a figure in a free floating, undefined ground.

This project is being organized by Deichtorhallen Hamburg in cooperation with Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and was made possible by the generous patronage of NORDMETALL-Stiftung and Kulturstiftung des Bundes.

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Video Making Of

Video Time Lapse

Video Catalog

Audio Artist talk with Antony Gormley

Gallery

Catalog

A catalog will be published at Snoeck Verlag with essays in German and English by Dirk Luckow, Stephan Levison, Iain Boyd Whyte, 172 pages, installation photos, linen weave.