drawings […] suggest an increasingly disordered arrangement of parts which follows the randomness of line found in an early experimental 

 drawing of 1988, where a ‘trajectory’ of the artist’s blood (issuing from the explosion of a capillary embolism on his finger) tracks a sinuous, abstract circuit across the paper. 

 images, the human figure is cleanly blocked-in with black pigment and appears comfortably suspended in a web that effortlessly supports his weight, visually relating to the 

 sculptures and generically anticipating the later work 

 (2007). But although the figure is clearly recognisable, the web itself is anarchically free-form with no mathematical structure. Progressively in the next two drawings, the body itself becomes increasingly abstracted until in 

 (2003), it disappears as a fully recognisable form and instead assumes a curvilinear shape which is attached to a vertical line or wire, akin to the suspended ‘abstract’ sculpture 

 (2008), with the suspension line that holds it up also visible. The uncertain outline in these drawings is also caused typically by the technique: experimenting at first with a small stone dipped in acrylic and later with a ball bearing, Gormley allowed the ‘ball’ to roll on its own across the paper in such a way that the random lines inevitably curve, drawn by the action of playful happenstance, rather than being controlled by the hand.’

, 2001, black pigment and casein on paper, 28.2 × 38.2 cm.

, 2001, black pigment and casein on paper, 37.8 × 28 cm. Photograph by Prudence Cuming Associates, London.

, 2001, black pigment and casein on paper, 56 × 77 cm.

, 2003, black pigment and casein on paper, 37.6 × 28.4 cm.

Trajectory Field

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