“Cast” at London’s Alan Cristea Gallery is an exhibition of more than 30 new works by British artist Antony Gormley – his first project with the gallery.The exhibition introduces four new series of works on paper including etchings, aquatints, monumental woodblocks, as well as a series of large, unique crude oil and petroleum jelly transfer body prints.“Cast” continues Gormely’s ongoing investigations into the relationship of the human body to space, in this case how the built environment limits our physical freedom and imaginative potential.The centerpiece of the exhibition is a series of 2.6-metre high “Body Prints” that the artist created by falling onto sheets of paper while covered in North Dakota crude oil and petroleum jelly.According to the Gallery, “the sacral use of crude oil as representative of the ‘blood of the earth’ highlights our dependency on the planet’s solar memory.”Reinterpreting anatomy in the language of architecture, Gormley’s new “Woodblocks” series is based on seven distinct body poses, linking back to the artist’s seminal “Expansion Field” installation.Measuring nearly three metres in height, the architectural, ghost-like impressions are made from blocks of sawn plywood.Also included in the exhibition is a further two series of prints that explore the fundamentals of printmaking, in particular the processes of etching and aquatint.Ten aquatints (Matrix I - X) carrying multiple overlaid silhouettes of architectural blocks are juxtaposed with a suite of linear etchings made with a hard needle.
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