Sunday, November 10, 2019

Antony Gormley Tangles with the Royal Academy of Art in London

I was drawn in to a temporary exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in London open until December 3, 2019. Having to climb through spirals of wire to cross a gallery looked like fun.


And it was. It could have just as easily been barbed wire in a prison. But instead it was welcoming--bordering on joyful. If the attached youtube launches, you can hear the wires clanging as people climb through.


British sculptor Antony Gormley's work, "Clearing VII" reminded me of Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist who peddles in bicycles (pun intended). 

I first noticed Ai Weiwei's work in the lobby of the Mr. and Mrs. Bund restaurant in Shanghai in 2013. A slew of bicycles hung from the ceiling.  

Not long after that, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston hosted an exhibit of Ai Weiwei's bicycles. Different bikes. Same medium. Tangles of metal that couldn't be used as intended. 




I wrote a blogpost about Ai Weiwei's two bicycle installations. https://worldgrazer.blogspot.com/search?q=weiwei


All of these works took me back to my roots in Philadelphia, where Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel is in the collection of the Museum of Art. It isn't much of a leap from Duchamp's stool to Weiwei's bikes to Gormley's wire in Clearing VII. 


Image result for philadelphia museum of art marcel duchamp bicycle wheel

I'm no art historian, but I'm seeing a theme. Things are not always what they were meant to be. And when they're not, they can puzzle. And they can delight.