Antony Gormley, Exposure, 2010 - Flevoland, Netherlands (July, 2024)
Background
This is the second post of five Land Art Flevoland sites that we visited in July, 2024. (I’ve repeated the next two paragraphs for all five posts)
Flevoland is the twelfth and newest province of the Netherlands. It exists in the Zuiderzee / Lake IJssel (a shallow bay connected to the North Sea, which they somehow converted from a body of saltwater into fresh water now), and almost the entirety of the province was added in mainly two separate land reclamation projects or polders. The first was in 1942 and the larger second started in 1955 and was completed in 1968. Flevopolder (as this new island was called) is the world’s largest artificial island at around 1,500 square kilometers.
Land Art was in its hayday of the 1960s and 1970s. In conjunction with the opening of this new land, the planners decided to add some land art pieces to become a part of Flevoland. Thematically it makes a ton of sense. Both creating Land Art and the empoldering process share a strong connection to the Earth and transformation of the landscape. You could even say that reclaiming this island was an even grander land art project. They’ve added 10 land art pieces now, with the most recent being completed in 2018.
Exposure is a sculpture by Antony Gormley that stands 26 meters tall and weighing around 60 tons. It sits along the manmade Markermeer lake. Also known as “The Crouching Man,” it is a massive squatting figurine staring out over the water. It is made of an intricate steel lattice structure. Interconnected black beams create a transparent skeleton. His positioning on the waterfront is an active testament to mankinds tussle with nature, sitting on reclaimed land next to a man made fresh water lake, formerly connected to the ocean. The open frame interacts with nature and weather, allowing the elements to interact with it and allow it to change over time. It even was suggested that there is an agreement that if they have to adjust the land in any way in the future, that Exposure must stay exactly where it is, so over time it could certainly be flooded or buried on purpose.
Antony Gormley, born in London in 1950, is a renowned British sculptor. His iconic works, like "Angel of the North" in Gateshead and "Another Place" in Liverpool, use human figures to prompt reflection on human existence and our place in the environment.He was even knighted in 2014 for his contributions. Here is a link to his website, filled with a very cool gallery of the designing and making of Exposure.
Travel
Exposure is essentially at the start of the dike that Engelen/Angels is located at, so they’re easy to do together.
Just off the coast of Lelystad
It is free to park here and access. There is usually a food truck posted up here as well.
The orange highlighted area is the intersection with the highway to enter this parking lot. The purple highlighted area is where the parking is. That Aida Snackwagen is a good wayfinding destination for GPS.
There’s probably about 30 drawn parking spots, but there seems to be plenty of extra overflow area if need be. We were one of the few vehicles there, but perhaps on a weekend or later in the day, when the adjacent beach is being used more, it could be more crowded. The parking lot was well maintained and didn’t seem sketchy. We weren’t worried about our vehicle or belongings. After you park just walk under the overpass, and you’ll see Exposure at the end of the road. You’ll pass an RV Park and a beach you can walk along if you’d like, but the walk is nearly a kilometer from the parking lot, so we didn’t detour. It is flat and paved.
There seemed to be no hours for parking / access. However, it probably just abides by public park rules as there wasn’t a lot of extra lighting. So I’d suggest visiting during the daylight. Though sunset here could be cool.
Lelystad is the most populated area in Flevoland, so if you’re going to need something to eat, it’s probably best to grab something here, as there aren’t a lot of options elsewhere on the island. Same goes for using the restroom.
Experience
We arrived around 11 in the morning, after driving from Amsterdam, up the west coast of the Markermeer lake, and listened to the Engelen/Angels piece crossing the dike. Immediately before you complete the dike and cross into Lelystad, you can pull off into a rest area of sorts, and walk along the remainder of the dike / island to Exposure.
We didn’t try Aida Snackwagen, though I was tempted by a classic Dutch pickled herring sandwich. There were no other patrons, so we didn’t feel like it was popular enough for us to risk it. We also had leftover Surinamese food from the night before that we ate at the feet of Exposure.
We were the only two people to visit. There were a few people wandering the beach, but it was mostly ours to explore.
Exposure is actually so far away from the highway that you don’t really notice the sculpture at first. The long direct walk there is quite nice. As you really feel like you are leaving your vehicle behind and visiting a hermit on the beach. In the moment I didn’t think much about potential rising tides, I mostly enjoyed the peace. It was nice to get away from the hustle of Amsterdam and a nice place to first step out of the car and get some views and air.
Hangin around his feet, in the distance we could see the cars back up on the dike as the drawbridge opened up to let a ferry cross from the Markermeer to the IJsselmeer. I couldn’t find the exact elevations, but suffice to say Markermeer is lower than IJsselmeer, which is closer to the Zuiderzee and the Atlantic. The Dutch used these series of dikes to lower the surrounding seawater, adding land to their country. Even Amsterdam is entirely below sea level and if the dams were to fail almost five million residents would be affected immediately. A terrifying thought that the Dutch have to grow up with. I wish we had known this before, and in the moment contemplated how water would submerge The Crouching Man.
Another thing I wish we knew is that there is an official Spotify Playlist for experiencing the art. Made by Good4Good for Land Art Luisterweekend. It’s just 3 song and 10 minutes long, see below. There is none for Engelen/Angels of course, since experiencing it already has an audio component.
Summary
As part of a Land Art Flevoland trip, it is a worthwhile spot, but it isn’t necessary to make a specific trip for just this one sculpture from Amsterdam.
Podcast / Interview
This is a link to Land Art Flevoland’s podcast / interview about Exposure. It is unfortunately in Dutch only. But I did put it through a transcriber (notta) and translator (Google). I apologize to the original content creators, I had to edit and bridge some gaps, but hey, I don’t speak Dutch, and I just wanted to share their content with more people. Hopefully they don’t mind. Below is the badly transcribed, translated to English, and edited interview transcript.
Luke Heezen: You can see him from far away, Antony Gormley's steel man in Lelystad. He gazes relaxed, recollected, over the Markermeer... while the wind blows right through his steel frame. Only when you walk down the Markerstrekdam road and approach him up close can you see how immense he is at 26 meters high. This steel giant has the same parts as electricity pylons. And its construction, like the construction of the entire island, was a technical feat. A special computer program was designed to be able to perform the complex calculations.
This work, Exposure from 2010 is the only one of the nine landscape works in Flevoland that is figurative and does not make direct use of the nature that lies around it. But despite his height, the crouching man is modest in his posture... and directs our gaze together with his to the surrounding nature.
I talk about this beautiful work and this crouching man with Vincent de Boer, an art advisor in public space at the Stroom in The Hague where he is also involved with land art works.
Welcome Vincent.
Vincent de Boer: Yes, thank you.
Luke: It is a steel giant. Look at the horizon, look at the nature. The longer such a land art work stands, the more the nature around it changes. You noticed that no one actually stops to think about the longer horizon of that change. Climate change for example. How is that possible?
Vincent: Yes, well, that's actually quite funny about Gormley’s work, that he already thought during the assignment formulation that the work, because the landscape changes, does not actually change the base on which the image stands. So if the sea rises, then the feet do not rise with it. So the dike on which he stands remains what it is and if the dike is raised, then the sculpture, the frame itself, is buried in the newly raised dike.
Luke: He said that?
Vincent: I read that in the contract and I actually found it so fascinating that he already, as a foreigner, looks at the landscape. For us it is so obvious that there is a battle with the sea, that there will be a raising of the dikes. That is actually part of our existence, our DNA you could say of Dutch people. While for foreigners that is much less of a given. Few think, wow, what kind of water feature is this? That he has chosen that spot on the dike and that is the spot where you also do not often travel to, that he invites you to, where you have to go, that is also on a beach, normally a piece would be much closer. So for him that place is a given and how you relate to it, but how the landscape will change, that actually already takes into account how you will experience that in the future. I find that very fascinating about this work, you don't see that very often actually.
Luke: What is interesting, is that the perspective will also change. So now you look at why with that crouching man over the Markermeer to the surroundings. But suppose those feet are under water.
Vincent: Yes, then the focal point of that work becomes those wet feet. Yes.
Luke: It may seem like someone who swims then.
Vincent: Yeah.
Luke: We now see a recognized man, but if the sea level is a few meters higher, then he might be sitting with his feet on the water.
Vincent: Yes, it may become the bathing man.
Luke: Is it possible that a few people (when confronting the art) may think about the relationship between sea level rise, climate change?
Vincent: Yes, I think it's too confrontational actually, that whole aspect of loss, of giving up. We've had everything in the Netherlands controlled for a long time, because it created itself by working together, by breaking away, actually by controlling nature. And that is actually the task in which we recognize more. So the fact that we may eventually have to give up that fight or that we will have to give up parts. You can already see that in the landscape near the rivers, that there is no more investment there to place houses or industry, because it may be flooded at high tide. So that whole aspect of moving more with nature and instead of resisting it or putting up a barrier, I think that is relatively new. There are all kinds of scenarios for museums in regards to their art; what we do in disasters, in floods, in atomic explosions, but for the buildings and the artwork in the public window, there is no plan for that at all. I actually found that quite astonishing. When you see how many people are involved in conservation, in making new works and also how important that is for our identity as the Netherlands. How many people come to the Netherlands, to Amsterdam, for all the culture that is there. And certainly the art in the public window, it is also a very unique aspect of the Netherlands if you compare it to other countries.
Luke: And then it would actually be a blind spot in our identity... that if we were to acknowledge that the water would want to be able to come... that we would be burdened with it, then we would also acknowledge our obligation in the fight against that water.
Vincent: Yes, you may have to make a choice. You can't take everything. So which works are really essential? What are they, what belongs in the canon and who decides that? And those are actually questions that we should already be thinking about. Because if you let it come to that, you will be too late and you may wonder why and who decides that.
Luke: Yes, so it could indeed be possible, we are sitting here in Zeewolde with a view of Richard Serra’s sea level, which could one day be under water again.
Vincent: That would be a moot point now, if there were no dikes. And we also have to deal with sinking ground. That goes down a few centimeters.
Luke: So perhaps there is also a silent warning in Gormley's work in exposure.
Vincent: Yeah.
Luke: Right now, we just see a dike with a beautiful free construction on it, but there may be a warning in it.
Vincent: Gormley’s works are always landscapes. He takes his own body as a starting point. He makes volumes of it. For this image too, he first let himself be completely... He sat down, and measured himself according to a computer… actually he had all the distances between all those points calculated. He assumed that none of those lines between them should disappear. So if one such bar were to be removed then the whole structure would actually collapse. So that whole... all that relationship between all those points on which the work is built... that is very central to him. But they are always in their landscape. Always in the mountains or in the streams. He relates to something. And you can say that here too, that he relates to this country. And that is of course very specific here because it is also all land that has been conquered from the sea.
Luke: The idea of sea level rise, climate change is in more of Gormley's works. Can you explain how that works?
Vincent: I know a work he made in Folkestone, England in which he also placed a number of figures at a sea outlet. And there is also a work in The Hague. It is now at the Kunstmuseum. That is a very invisible work because it is a well. And in it you see a man in a well. But as a visitor you walk over the edge of that well. So you only see him from above. He stands with his feet in the water. That is actually also a very recognizable Dutch image. Because he has to sink or swim. We all know that image. But that image is literally that person who sinks or swims.
Luke: If we had to fantasize, what would you like to save from the public artworks? That is of course a very difficult question, but which do you think are essential? Have you thought about that?
Vincent: I'm actually interested in what that would look like. Do we know what we have? I think the moment you realize what you're losing, you also realize how precious those works of art are. I often notice that in The Hague when they remove a work of art for maintenance or because of some change, like the zoning plan changes, then a lot comes loose. Then we say things like, “but I always looked at this work as a child and I would find it very bad if it disappeared and that is why it has to come back.” So at that moment when you're asking those questions, you're activating that relationship with the audience. And I would actually call it much more of a thought exercise of what happens if we have to give up those works, what does that mean for us?
Luke: What would you do? What three things would hurt you the most?
Vincent: I think that's really a fair question.
Luke: A question of a different nature.
Vincent: Yes, and I actually also find the coherence of works. Well, I think that one of my favorite works in The Hague is the work of Vito Arconci. That is actually a bit of a very unknown work. It is behind the Den Haag Hollands Spoor. There is a kind of fraction of an island. It is called Park in the Water. Arconci came to the exhibition in Stroom. And was actually more a kind of an alternative way to look at the developments for a new campus behind Holland Spoor. They were busy re-arranging it. And then he said, well, that was an old harbor. What if you were to smash that landmass of that harbor into pieces like a mirror and spread all those shards over the water. That was really a totally different way of dealing with such an area at a different scale. And that was of course a rather ambitious plan, but one of those shards has been realized. It has actually been cut off from that harbor head. And like a kind of island, it sits there in the water. And you can get there by making a little track. So it is a work where you are in the eye of the hurricane. Around you you experience that big city with noise, with all kinds of high-rise buildings and changes. But there is a kind of stillness there. And I find these kinds of places very precious. Because I think the public space is used very much by everyone there. And now you also notice that it opens up together. Everybody wants more space to use. Allowing both for others, but also a feeling that it is just my space. So he is under pressure to accommodate both aspects.
Luke: So you want quiet zones, an oasis of peace.
Vincent: Yes, you would like to have some places where different laws apply, where people can indeed retreat to seek some kind of tranquility, especially in environments that are so restless, so hectic.
Luke: And if you go back to this Gormley, to Exposure, how do you expect him to be sitting, standing, strolling in twenty years' time.
Vincent: Yes, I think the environment will have changed a lot, there are plans to create islands in the market lake, there will be more vegetation around it, so where it is now a kind of giant in a very empty landscape, I expect that in 20, 30 years it will have become a lot better, but perhaps we will come to the conclusion that it is not a good place to live at all and we will leave it alone and it will be completely overgrown or we will retreat to the hills of the Veluwe (National Park).
Luke: Yes, and it's funny that with all those scenarios that you're sketching now, that the relationship of that man with his environment also changes a lot. So either, it's a river landscape or it's built up and there's people wedged in there. Which could also be a beautiful image, of course, that the building stands for a moment and that the man is gradually trapped in his own figure. Or he is under water, yes.
Vincent: I once read that if that man were to stand up, that figure would be over a hundred meters. Maybe Antony should come up with a remake in which the man eventually, or in a different place, stands up.
Luke: Yes, I think that's a good way to say what a quality outdoor artwork is, if it does something to the environment and stimulates your imagination.
Vincent: And it really is a quality indeed.
Luke: It remains to be seen, but it may also be a reflection of what is going to happen to that very big man. That environment may be a bit of our future.
Vincent: Yes, and I think it's very good that he addresses it, that he names it and names it now, in which actually this undermining is not yet completely undiscussable. That whole aspect of what if, that is still very much pushed off into the future. And we're going to have to fix it, no matter what, with higher dikes or an extra dune for the North Sea coast. So the whole feasibility idea, it still prevents us from thinking about that a little bit. I think that art has the ability to talk about this with a certain freedom and with a certain imagination.
Luke: And of course he is literally a visionary, not really a man, but he looks further than we can now, he looks beyond the horizon as it were. So maybe it would be nice to stand at his feet and look along. Thank you Vincent for speaking about it.
Sources
Land Art Flevoland. “Antony Gormley, Exposure.” Accessed October 23, 2024. https://www.landartflevoland.nl/en/land-art/antony-gormley-exposure/.
“Exposure van Antony Gormley.” SoundCloud audio, 5:41. Accessed October 23, 2024. https://soundcloud.com/user-129191601/7-exposure-van-antony-gormley.
Antony Gormley Studio. “Exposure.” Accessed October 23, 2024. https://www.antonygormley.com/works/making/exposure.
Wikipedia. “Exposure (sculpture).” Last modified March 31, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_(sculpture).
Higgins, Charlotte. “Antony Gormley’s Giant Man Keeps Watch on Flevoland.” The Guardian, August 27, 2010. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/aug/27/antony-gormley-exposure-sculpture.
My Modern Met. “Antony Gormley’s Towering ‘Exposure’ Sculpture Is as Fragile as It Is Strong.” Accessed October 23, 2024. https://mymodernmet.com/antony-gormley-exposure/.