Research to Develop Aesthetic (Antony Gormley)

‘somaesthetics’ “implies a project of appreciating and cultivating the body not only as an object that externally displays beauty, sublimity, grace, and other aesthetic qualities, but also as a subjectivity that perceives these qualities and that experiences attendant aesthetic pleasures somatically”
- Feel as though this is focusing a lot more on the body than the works, things delving into somaesthetics don't have as much of a clear aesthetic as the Fluxus movement. 

Fluxus 

 

When I googled 'Fluxus' nearly all the images were in black and white. I'm assuming this is due to the time the movement began. The only other colour is red. 
- Should I adopt a similar aesthetic or is this outdated? Would fluxus look like this today?

 

- Very simple analogue aesthetic. I feel like adopting this minimal style will help the project from becoming unbalance. 
- Need to experiment with the grit more, something about these images is gritty, they're not perfect, some things are off centre, wonky etc. Allow self room to play. 


Antony Gormley 

"I want this exhibition to encourage present, first-hand experience. It will concentrate on the body in space: firstly, the viewer's body, through a series of proprioceptive environments that enhance awareness, alertness and sensorial space, and secondly in the presentation of discrete objects that evoke what it feels like to inhabit a human body."This installation acts as a kind of vector field, encouraging the viewer to move through its structure, and in so doing, disrupts the authority of a single-point perspective, necessitating, instead, a constant renegotiation of the visual field.

In describing body posture as 'the language before language', the artist invites the viewer to empathetically project a range of emotional tonalities onto the work. With this exhibition, as with all his work, the primary challenge is to identify the body as a place in which thoughts, sensations and emotions arise, rather than as an object of idealisation or representation.

• These ideas of space, the body and mind are all being discussed within the works.
• It's really interesting to hear about the way Gormley wants the audience to interact and feel within these spaces.
• These works feel as though they embody somaesthetics, it seems almost like the FLuxus of today. Gormley mentions wanting the audience to engage with the work and almst this becomes a piece of performance art within itself.