Early Work On View At Tate Modern
For the opening of the new Switch House at Tate Modern, Antony Gormley’s Untitled [For Francis] (1986) is on view in the Boiler House, Level 2 East, alongside a painting by Agnes Martin.
Untitled [For Francis] is a plaster mould of the artist’s body, reinforced with fibreglass and encased in a skin made from sheets of soldered lead. The lead surface varies in colour from dark to light grey. The work has been pierced in the breast, hands and feet by small apertures. The attitude of the eyeless figure, standing with head tilted back, feet apart and arms extended to display the palms of its hands, resembles that of a Christian saint receiving the stigmata, although it is ‘wounded’ in the breast, rather than, as tradition dictates, in the side.
Photograph: Untitled [For Francis], 1986, Tate Modern, London, UK. Installation view. Photograph © Tate Photography.