 is showing a solo exhibition by Antony Gormley entitled 

. This represents the inaugural event in a new series called ‘Lee Ufan and His Friends’ at Space Lee Ufan. The first solo exhibition in Korea of new works by Gormley will include sculptures 

 from his ‘Rooter’ series, together with 16 drawings.

The works apply plant-like branching systems to map a human body in space: ‘A root hair is constantly searching the interstices between sand, rock and loam. It is about the most tender thing you can find but it is what allows the system to gather its energy from its environment. I love what a root is as a metaphor but also what it is as a system. Let’s think of the space of the body as an unknown and start a three-dimensional exploration. It is a system that feels its way into this bodily darkness and touches the bounding condition, sometimes even breaking through it. That sense of exposing the unknowable to the light is important to me.’

These sculptures are made of iron: the core material of the earth. Their dark surface has been created through the sculpture’s immersion in a tank of tannic acid, a process that simulates anaerobic oxidisation. They reveal their dynamic nature through a series of 90-degree bends: the structure, the material and the method of making are integral to their potential.

The accompanying drawings made with Chinese brush and ink show figures caught within axonometric grid lines that form a plane and a three-dimensional trellis that both supports and extends these body-cores.

All the works gathered here are an evocation of what the artist sees as the central idea of his practice: the desire to collapse inside into outside, subject into object, and viewer into viewed.

Busan Museum of Art

, 2018, cast iron, 131.6 × 192.7 × 65 cm. Photograph by Hyun Jin Park.

 2019, cast iron, 41 × 61 × 236.5 cm. Photograph by Hyun Jin Park.

Installation view. Photograph by Hyun Jin Park.

, 2019, sumi ink on Chinese calligraphy paper, 98 × 216cm.

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