Antony Gormley - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Tuesday, June 26, 2018 | Phillips

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 27 June 2018

  • Provenance

    Galleria Continua
    Corporate Collection, Asia

  • Catalogue Essay

    Expressing uncertainty, nervousness and apprehension, the body posture of CLAMP IV evokes a feeling of arrested internal movement, with fists held hard under head and the torso twisting between head and hip.

    The sculpture is an example of Antony Gormley’s Cube Works series (2012 – 2018). Intrigued by the ways in which iron pyrite naturally aggregates, the artist began to experiment by using off‐set cubes to create body masses. The aim was to translate the volumes of the body into strict cubic frames or solids.

    The cube’s rigid geometry and ability to be stacked has allowed it to become the basis of modernist construction and rational measurement. Using it here as the ground to evoke strong emotion, this work is powerful proof of the artist’s claim that ‘as the work becomes more abstract it engages our empathy more completely’.

    CLAMP IV is formed of unsteady stacks and incorporates a block as its base to exaggerate its precariousness, referencing Brancusi's interest in making the object's isolation from the floor part of a sculpture's structure.

    Implying a dialogue between human nature and planetary matter this lifesize work is cast in iron, an earth material identical to the core of the planet and which when exposed at its surface reacts to time and the elements, fusing the both into the meaning and material of the sculpture.

Property from an Asian Corporate Collection

2

Antony Gormley

Clamp IV

incised with the artist’s initials, inscribed and dated ‘AMDG 3535 2016’ on the underside
cast iron
176 x 40 x 80 cm (69 1/4 x 15 3/4 x 31 1/2 in.)
Executed in 2016.

Estimate
£200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠

Sold for £393,000

Contact Specialist
Henry Highley
Specialist, Head of Evening Sale
+ 44 20 7318 4061 hhighley@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 27 June 2018