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BODY AND MIND

Antony Gormley & Oliviero Rainaldi drawings

curated by James Putnam

 

Gallery of Art, Temple University, Rome

February- March, 2007

Best known as sculptors and creators of sculptural installations Antony Gormley and Oliviero Rainaldi, present a selection of recent drawings, using different materials and techniques that reveal their common interests in the body and space. Rainaldi’s drawings with their refined line and contour and economical use of monochrome ink washes are an ongoing exploration of bodily form as represented in his solo exhibition at Palazzo Venezia, Rome. In contrast, Antony Gormley ‘s drawings show his departure from exploring the body’s inner space to an interest in examining how a viewer experiences space in time and undermining the frame of perspective as illustrated in his Event Horizon exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London.

In his large Last Supper drawing, distributed over five panels, Rainaldi has used the traditional materials of tempera, charcoal and pigment on utilitarian cardboard. The subject is a pretext for revisiting an iconic art historical image, which he feels, is thought provoking and still relevant to our contemporary sensibility. But rather than the subject itself he is more interested in the theme and concept of betrayal and which grows out of it. Rainaldi’s other drawings use the technique of Indian ink washed with the brush on absorbent paper. For Gormley, drawing isn’t about making pictures, it is about testing ideas and testing materials, as well. His drawings on thick handmade paper are of three distinct types called Clearing, Hatch and Web that relate to the orientation of the body in space. Gormley is really interested in space, the way it is articulated in relation to us, how we perceive space,  the way we project our own feeling of space, our inner space, onto space at large, and how we try to understand it. Each drawing tries to engage the viewers participation/interact in a shift between space and matter and relate to Einstein’s realization was that space is a dimension of time and time a dimension of space.

Gallery of Art, Temple University, Rome

see catalogue in publications section




  Body and Mind installation view
 

Antony Gormley drawing 
 

 

Oliviero Rainaldin drawing
 
 


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