Antony Gormley: Another Place

I first learned about Antony Gormley while working for the art advisory firm in San Francisco on plans to install one of his cast-iron figures on a client's property. They wished to place the sculpture in the middle of a lake near their home, from which it would appear to be rising out of the water's surface. I don't think it was ever completed after I moved out of California, but during the project, I fell in love with his work.

Gormley has an ability to communicate both solitude and unity through his installations, which often include dozens of life size, cast-iron figures of his own body. Another Place is a great example (pictured above). Installed, and then later removed because of local politics, at Crosby Beach in England in 2005, 100 of these figures were positioned so that they faced out toward the sea. They each stood alone, spaced apart by some distance, yet at the same time they remained as a group and therefore unified in some way. It makes for an interesting tension between the two realities - separateness and solidarity. Standing among them, between these two possibilities, where would we, as the viewers and perhaps participants in the scene, have fallen?