BREGENZ.- Together with the British sculptor Antony Gormley, the Kunsthaus Bregenz is planning a solo exhibition at the KUB and, parallel to this show, a largescale landscape project in Vorarlberg, both to take place in the summer of 2009. Antony Gormley ranks among the most important artists in the world and is one of Great Britain’s major contemporary sculptors. His work deals primarily with man and his complex relationship to society, architecture, and nature. The key element of his art is the human body. Using his own body as a point of departure, he presents this theme in constantly new sculptural constellations – as individual figures and in large ensembles. This large-scale project with Gormley draws from the artistic tension between the “closed” inside the KUB (exhibition) and the “open” in the boundlessness of nature (“Horizon Field”). Together, exhibition and landscape project pose fundamental questions about how art can coexist with the world in which we live.

The exhibition at the KUB brings together four large-scale major work series from Antony Gormley’s oeuvre from the period between 1995 and 2006/09: “Suspension,” “Allotment,” “Critical Mass,” and “Blind Light.” Embedded in the context of Peter Zumthor’s architecture, they challenge the fine line in the human psyche that marks the mental balance between asserting oneself as an individual and blending into the masses. The light/mist space “Blind Light” constitutes a special highlight. It was first developed for the Hayward Gallery in London, and for the show in Bregenz it is being adapted so that its ideal configuration corresponds to the proportions and measurements of Zumthor’s architecture. Through the parallel presentation of these two projects, the audience has the rare opportunity to ponder the concept behind a major contemporary work in a literally large-scale and subtle way.