Quantum Cloud XXXIX (Maria)

About this work

A series of steel sculptures (1999–2000) in which a human figure seems to condense out of, or dissolve into, a cloud of linear steel elements. The monumental 30-metre Quantum Cloud beside The O2 in Greenwich is the best known. The smaller numbered works are held by museums including SFMOMA, the Denver Art Museum, the Nasher Sculpture Center and Kunsthalle Bremen.

Technique

Each work is built from short straight steel sections joined into tetrahedral units. A computer random-walk algorithm places the units, starting from points on the surface of an enlarged scan of Gormley’s own body. The figure remains as a dense "residual outline" at the centre. The concept comes from quantum physicist Basil Hiley’s ideas of pre-space as a structure beneath space-time and matter.

Context drawn from the Quantum Cloud collection.