Cover Antony Gormley, who has his first solo exhibition in Seoul this year (Photo: courtesy of John O Rourke)
Antony Gormley, who has his first solo exhibition in Seoul this year (Photo: courtesy of John O Rourke)
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Antony Gormley says his sculptures “demand to be seen” in his first solo exhibition in Seoul, ‘Inextricable’, which coincides with Frieze Seoul.
To Antony Gormley, sculpture is a provocation. Unlike the functional objects that populate our daily lives, a sculpture is an interloper: something that refuses utility, disrupts habit and demands to be noticed. Encountering one in the street, he suggests, is like finding a dropped wallet—an intimate fragment of another’s life exposed, displaced and suddenly vulnerable. But unlike the wallet, the sculpture does not invite ownership or resolution. Instead, it confronts us, challenging our instincts to see, touch and imagine.
That idea of confrontation—sculpture as a reflexive instrument that prompts him to ask “What am I, and what is a world?”—lies at the heart of Inextricable, Gormley’s first solo exhibition in Seoul. Staged across two galleries, White Cube and Thaddaeus Ropac, and opening alongside Frieze Seoul, the exhibition explores the tension between body and architecture, intimacy and exposure, home and city. It is as much a meditation on Seoul’s restless urban landscape as it is on the human condition itself.
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Above Antony Gormley in at ‘Inextricable’ at White Cube Seoul (Photo: courtesy of White Cube and Jeon Byung Cheol)
Antony Gormley in at ‘Inextricable’ at White Cube Seoul (Photo: courtesy of White Cube and Jeon Byung Cheol)
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At Thaddaeus Ropac in Hannam, the exhibition unfolds like a dialogue with the private sphere. Works such as the looping Extended Strapworks (2022–2025) trace sinuous lines across floors and walls, destabilising any fixed boundary between interior and exterior. Two Open Blockworks, Open Daze (2024) and Home (2025), articulate modular forms that invite the viewer in, while pressed Knotworks (2019-2022) recall hidden infrastructures—plumbing, circuitry and the skeleton of domestic life. Together, they remind us that our dwellings do not simply contain us; they shape the very way we inhabit the world.
White Cube in Cheongdam, meanwhile, brings sculpture into collision with the scale and speed of the city. Here, cast-iron Blockworks perch on pavements and walls, resisting the velocity of traffic and pedestrian flow. Swerve IV (2024) confronts oncoming cars, asserting immovable stillness, while Cotch XIII (2024) assumes a contemplative seated pose, as if carving out a moment of pause amid urban acceleration. Retreat: Slump (2022), resembling a bunker with a darkened mouth, resists intrusion, insisting on depth over spectacle. Inside, the Beamer series translates the body into skeletal beams, literalising the Cartesian order of architecture.
Above ‘Inextricable’ at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Seoul (Photo: courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul and Jeon Byung Cheol)
Above ‘Inextricable’ at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Seoul (Photo: courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul and Jeon Byung Cheol)
‘Inextricable’ at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Seoul (Photo: courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul and Jeon Byung Cheol)
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If Thaddaeus Ropac offers the interior, White Cube provides its counterweight: the exposure of public space. Between them, the two venues stage a conversation about the conditions of modern life—one in which, in Gormley’s words, “the world now builds us”.
For over four decades, Gormley has pursued sculpture as a tool of diagnosis, rather than decoration. His works do not represent the body so much as displace it, marking “a human space in space” that requires activation by the viewer. The process begins with sight, continues through touch—is it hollow, solid, fixed or loose?—and completes itself in the imagination. For Gormley, imagination is no mere flourish. It is “the seed ground of possibility and the engine of personal liberty”.
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Above ‘Retreat: Slump’ (2022) by Antony Gormley at White Cube (Photo: courtesy of White Cube and Jeon Byung Cheol)
Above Antony Gormley’s ‘Inextricable’ at White Cube (Photo: courtesy of White Cube and Jeon Byung Cheol)
‘Retreat: Slump’ (2022) by Antony Gormley at White Cube (Photo: courtesy of White Cube and Jeon Byung Cheol)
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This approach has given rise to some of the most iconic public artworks of the past century. The Angel of the North (1994) in Gateshead, England has become a symbol of the region’s post-industrial identity, monumental yet approachable. Another Place (1997) on Crosby Beach, England stretches human presence across the tidal expanse, figures appearing and disappearing with the waves. Works like Exposure (2010) in the Netherlands and Inside Australia (2003) in the salt plains of Lake Ballard, Australia embed sculpture into landscape, making it inseparable from place. Each insists on a form of encounter that is intimate, embodied and transformative.
Over the years, Gormley has received the Turner Prize, the Praemium Imperiale, and most recently, appointment as Companion of Honour in 2025. Yet he resists the idea of style or signature, preferring to ground his practice in elemental materials such as iron, steel and concrete that tether the work to the forces of the earth. His art is never about commemorating the past but about articulating the conditions of the present and the possibilities of the future.
Above Antony Gormley ’Inextricable’ at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Seoul (Photo: courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul and Jeon Byung Cheol)
Antony Gormley ’Inextricable’ at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Seoul (Photo: courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul and Jeon Byung Cheol)
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Inextricable arrives at a moment when our relationship with cities is both unavoidable and precarious. According to the United Nations, by 2050, 70 per cent of the world’s population will live in urban centres, their lives defined by density, speed and technological mediation. In this context, Gormley’s sculptures stand as silent resistances: still, stubborn and demanding of our full attention.
In Seoul, they take on an added resonance. A city that has rebuilt itself within decades, that thrives on perpetual motion, becomes a stage on which Gormley’s question feels especially urgent. His sculptures ask us to pause, see, imagine and confront not only the object before us, but the world we are making together.
Inextricable is a proposition: that to understand ourselves, we must first learn to dwell more consciously within the architectures, both intimate and monumental, that shape our existence.
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Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
