“SENSE: Beuys / Gormley: A conversation through drawing”, Thaddaeus Ropac | London | 37 Dover Street Ely House, January 19, 2023 - March 22, 2023

Accompanying Thaddaeus Ropac’s expansive solo exhibition of Joseph Beuys is a second, smaller show curated by Antony Gormley that places works by both artists in dialogue. Unsurprisingly, Gormley’s selections from Beuys mostly feature references to the human body. In some cases, these references are rather oblique, as in “part A” of a group of pencil drawings entitled Bewegung Rhythmus (Movement Rhythm), 1962, in which a dismembered arm hovers near a barely articulated crotch. In other instances, they are more emphatic, as in the descriptively titled piece in pencil, watercolor, gouache, and iron chloride Zwei Frauen (Two Women), 1955, the silhouettes of whose titular female figures bear a distinct sense of intimacy in spite of their inchoateness.