tadao ando's concrete dome for antony gormley exhibition in korea

Tadao Ando & Antony Gormley’s ground at museum san

Antony Gormley’s largest Korean exhibition to date opens at Museum SAN amid the forested hills of Wonju. Titled Drawing on Space, the showcase spans 48 works ranging from large-scale sculptures and immersive installations to drawings and prints, while introducing Ground, a permanent intervention created in collaboration with Japanese architect Tadao Ando. This new work marks the first time a space has been conceived specifically to house the British sculptor’s work permanently.

Buried beneath the museum’s flower garden, Ground takes the form of a 25-meter-wide subterranean dome. A single oculus at its peak draws natural light into the circular void, evoking the architectural spirit of the Pantheon while channeling Ando’s minimalism and Gormley’s spatial consciousness. Descending into the space, visitors first encounter seven cast-iron figures from Gormley’s Blockworks series through a panoramic glazed wall, with each sculpture seated, standing, or crouching in moments of stillness within the cavernous space. Further inside, the spatial experience becomes more immersive as viewers step into the sensorial concrete dome itself which brings in glimpses of the surrounding nature. A final cast-iron figure stands outside, visible through the aperture, aligning the space to the mountains beyond.

all images courtesy of Museum SAN

drawing on space spans 48 works and a permanent intervention

Drawing on Space surveys Antony Gormley’s decades-long inquiry into the human body and its relationship to space.

Spread across all three galleries of the Cheongjo wing, the works question how we might represent the body, and how we sense, move through, and perceive space through it. One of the largest developments exploring these ideas is Ground, a permanent architectural installation that anchors the exhibition and redefines the museum’s, and its works’, relationship to its landscape. Designed by Tadao Ando and hosting works by Gormley, the underground dome becomes a contemplative environment that heightens spatial awareness through light, material, and bodily movement. As visitors descend into the space and move among the cast-iron figures, the work asks them to reconsider their own presence in the world as physical, sensing beings in tune with the architecture and elements around them.

Museum SAN’s long-standing mission to integrate art, architecture, and nature finds full expression here, following earlier architectural projects such as the James Turrell Pavilion and Space of Light. ‘The idea of this exhibition is to allow physical and imaginative space to come together,’ notes the sculptor. ‘The works will activate rather than occupy space, and explore the enclosures of architecture and the body as sensate.’ With Ground, the museum deepens this trajectory, offering a contemplative, sensory-driven space in which light, shadow, sound, and temperature become part of the artwork, just as much as sculpture and concrete.

Drawing on Space opens at Museum SAN

an exploration of body, space, and the senses

Gallery 1 introduces Liminal Field, a group of seven sculptures composed of cellular geometries that form airy, porous structures suggestive of the body as a threshold. These human-scale voids echo the fragility of bubbles and the impermanence of form. In Gallery 2, drawings and prints on paper extend these ideas in two dimensions as Gormley explores light, darkness, mass, and void, returning often to the dialogue between body and built form, architecture and interiority.

Orbit Field II in Gallery 3 culminates the show with an immersive installation composed of interlocking aluminum rings suspended and anchored throughout the space. Some connect to floor and ceiling, others float freely, encouraging visitors to duck, turn, and weave through the matrix. Movement becomes part of the work, echoing the Eamesian notion of the viewer as an active participant and underscoring Gormley’s belief that sculpture is less about objecthood than embodied experience.

the exhibition introduces Ground, a permanent intervention created in collaboration with architect Tadao Ando