White Cube returns to Frieze Los Angeles (26 February – 1 March 2026, stand D02) with a solo presentation by Antony Gormley (b. 1950, London).
Curated by the artist, the booth brings together Gormley’s sculptures and drawings, exploring the threshold between the biological body – understood as a first dwelling – and the built environment – a second body on which contemporary life increasingly depends.
Four sculptures investigate this relationship through distinct material and sculptural languages. Retreat: Cotch (2022), conceived as an intimate bunker for one, functions simultaneously as a concrete structure and a surrogate body. Part meditation cell, part architectural form, it invites imaginative inhabitation. The darkness visible through its square aperture evokes the space entered when the eyes close, proposed here as a potent site of personal freedom. Dwell II (2025) interrogates the body’s internal condition and its entanglement with the built environment. Straps of rusted Corten steel extend beyond the body’s boundary, reaching toward the edges of the space it occupies. The work questions where the body begins and ends, and to what extent constructed environments, in turn, shape the bodies that inhabit them.
In Buttress (2024), the artist considers how two bodies might find stability through a shared centre of gravity. Two columns of stacked blocks are fused into a single cast-iron mass, forming a structure that is both solid and precarious. The work explores physical intimacy as a condition of vulnerability, foregrounding the human need for support and closeness. Rest II (2012), cast in iron from assembled foam blocks that were vaporised in the casting process and placed directly on the ground, reflects a dual reliance on the earth itself and on built habitats that structure contemporary life.
Complementing the sculptures are five recent drawings that extend these concerns. These works render body-space and architecture as shared perceptual fields. Aperture I and Aperture X (both 2023) offer views from within ambiguous interiors, suggestive of either bodily depths or the dark spaces of buildings. Set II and Set VI (both 2018) map the body as a coordinate system, registering its position within constructed space. Event V (2019) reaches further outward, envisioning cosmic phenomena beyond direct bodily encounter.
Together, the works on view consider whether art can awaken awareness of shifting conditions across body, mind, and environment.
The exhibition ‘Antony Gormley: Geestgrond’ is on view at KMSKA, Antwerp, from 23 May until 20 September 2026 and the book ‘Drawing: Antony Gormley’ is published by Thames & Hudson on 23 April 2026.
