Antony Gormley

Quantum Cloud, 2000

Galvanised Steel 29 x 16 x 10 m

This monumental sculpture by British artist Antony Gormley was commissioned for the North Meadow Sculpture Project in celebration of the millennium.  Quantum Cloud is composed of a central group of 325 extended tetrahedral sections which are connected to over 3,500 of the same elements extending into space. Evoking the quantum age, and suggesting an unstable relation between energy and mass, it questions whether the body is produced by the field or the field by the body. Visually, it was inspired by conversations between Gormley and quantum physicist Basil Hiley. In its totality, it questions the relationship of the self to the world and foregrounds the viewer’s influence on the viewed – a feature both of quantum physics and art.

Commissioned as part of the millennium celebrations by The New Millennium Experience Company

Courtesy the artist

Biography

Antony Gormley (b.1950, London) is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. 

Gormley has had a number of recent solo shows at venues including The Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019); Delos, Greece (2019); Uffizi Gallery, Florence (2019); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2019); Long Museum, Shanghai (2017); Forte di Belvedere, Florence (2015); Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland (2014). Permanent public works include the Angel of the North (Gateshead, England), Another Place (Crosby Beach, England), Exposure (Lelystad, The Netherlands) and Chord (MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA). He has also participated in major group shows such as the Venice Biennale (1982 and 1986) and Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany (1987). Gormley won the Turner Prize in 1994 and has been a member of The Royal Academy since 2003. He was made an Officer of the British Empire in 1997 and received a knighthood in 2014. He lives and works in London.