Gormley reveals labyrinthine artwork

A huge glowing labyrinth of grids filling a blackened room was unveiled today as Angel of the North creator Antony Gormley's latest artwork.

A "maze" of stacked blocks of cast iron also feature in the display at the White Cube gallery in central London, as part of the artist's latest examination of the relationship between architecture and the human body.

Prices for works in the exhibition, titled Test Sites, range from £200,000 to £600,000 for the luminous 3D aluminium tubing grids, titled Breathing Room III.

As visitors slowly grow accustomed to the darkened space surrounding the work, intense bursts of light are beamed into the room, interrupting their quiet meditation.

Standing next to his series of cast iron blocks, Gormley, who uses his own body as the inspiration for his works, said: "We are minds encased in human bodies and our bodies are encased in architecture...

"The subject of my work has been spatial awareness from the beginning.

"That's what I'm trying to deal with, our embededness within the urban grid and how that affects our behaviour."

Gormley continued: "I'm very, very excited by this show. It's the first time I have shown a body of work that has such a close and clear articulation, one with another."

He said of the cast iron blocks: "It turns into a kind of labyrinth and maze, it relates so well with (Breathing Room III).

"I'm thrilled, I'm absolutely thrilled."

He said of Breathing Room III, which measures around five by nine by 17 metres and appears almost like a hologram: "It can be virtual or real, but you are invited to enter the space of the work."

The 59-year-old artist's recent works include One & Other, which gave more than 2,000 people, several of them naked, an hour to spend as they wished on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth.

Gormley said: "I believe that the language of the body is the language before language."

Video: Gormley gets physical

He said of his artworks: "If I was some kind of megalomaniac narcissist that wanted to fill the world full of images of himself I think I could do a hell of a lot better (a) job than this."

Test Sites is open to the public at White Cube Mason's Yard from tomorrow until July 10.