Antony Gormley's cardboard immersion opens a dialogue between art and landscape

Antony Gormley, the British sculptor known for landmark public installations including the Angel of the North in Gateshead and Event Horizon in New York, has brought a significant new body of work to San Gimignano, a Tuscan hill town famous for its medieval towers and postcard status. According to Forbes, the centerpiece of his exhibition "What Holds Us" at Galleria Continua is titled "Innercity" and marks the first time Gormley has worked substantially in cardboard. The material choice is deliberate: cardboard is temporary, humble, and radically at odds with the marble, fresco, and Renaissance stone that define Tuscan heritage.

The exhibition's venue—a commercial gallery in a town whose economy and identity depend almost entirely on tourism and its image as a preserved medieval village—creates a productive tension. Forbes describes "Innercity" as one of Gormley's most immersive works, suggesting an experience that asks visitors to move through space and engage with their own physical presence, rather than stand before an object and consume it. In San Gimignano, a place where tourism often means the rapid accumulation of photographs and the conversion of landscape into backdrop, Gormley's work insists on presence and duration.