Visitors to Seoul's upscale Cheongdam neighborhood this fall will encounter an unexpected sight: a rusted iron humanoid sculpture standing boldly in the middle of a busy walkway, forcing pedestrians to navigate around its deliberate presence. The striking piece is part of British sculptor Antony Gormley's first solo exhibition in Seoul, titled "Inextricable," which runs simultaneously across two prestigious galleries through late fall.

Gormley, renowned for his exploration of the human body in space, deliberately positioned the sculpture to disrupt daily routines and provoke contemplation. "It's important to me to place this rock in the stream of daily life," the artist explained during his recent visit to Korea, which coincided with Frieze Seoul. He envisions a dialogue between passersby and his work, where viewers might wonder what the sculpture is doing in their world, while the piece seems to question back: "And what, exactly, are you doing in my world?"

This marks Gormley's second visit to Korea within a single year, following the June opening of "Ground," his vast underground dome installation at Museum SAN in Gangwon Province. The Seoul exhibition, "Inextricable," unfolds across both White Cube and Thaddaeus Ropac galleries, each venue offering a distinct perspective on the relationship between human bodies and urban environments.

Gormley draws a clear distinction between his work and traditional public monuments. "There is a distinction between my work and the statue, which has served power in history," he emphasized. "This is not a military hero, confident in the values it represents. A sculpture is a reflective instrument that invites a kind of participatory skepticism, asking a question of where we belong." His pieces stand silent and still, requiring viewers to physically navigate around them, creating small detours that prompt reflection on movement, space, and our place in the world.

Seoul provides a particularly charged backdrop for Gormley's urban exploration. Korea's most populous city has undergone dramatic transformation from postwar devastation to dense urban jungle within mere decades. "There's something really extraordinary about the sense of regeneration [here] after the cruel years of the civil war in the early '50s, after the decades of Japanese occupation," Gormley observed. "There is a sense of making a world, expressed in the very infrastructure and the city's enormous physical robustness."

The artist recognizes how Seoul's urban topography actively shapes human behavior, choreographing bodies and dictating how residents move, walk, sit, and position themselves in daily life. This dynamic relationship between the body as "an urban animal" and the city it inhabits forms the conceptual foundation for his two-venue exhibition, with each location exploring different aspects of this urban entanglement.

At White Cube, six life-sized sculptures cast from metal and concrete—the very materials that define modern metropolises—occupy various positions throughout the space and spilling onto the street. One piece stands sentinel among the flow of pedestrians, another sits with legs outstretched between two buildings, while a third wedges awkwardly against the gallery's glass facade, reminiscent of mannequins in shop windows. These works engage directly with the pulse and rhythm of street life, creating immediate encounters between art and urban movement.

The presentation at Thaddaeus Ropac takes a more introspective approach, focusing on the city's architectural systems both visible and hidden. "Extended Strapworks" features looping steel ribbons that stretch across floors and walls, tracing the geometric lines of the gallery space and revealing how building design guides human movement. Meanwhile, "Knotworks" evokes Seoul's concealed connective infrastructure—the networks of plumbing, electrical systems, and transit routes that structure urban life behind the scenes, inviting viewers to contemplate the complex systems that make city living possible.

The exhibition demonstrates Gormley's belief that sculptures should function as "things in the world of things" that don't serve as mere instruments for human interaction. Instead, they maintain their own presence and agency, requiring people to acknowledge and accommodate them. This philosophical approach transforms everyday encounters with art into moments of heightened awareness about space, movement, and urban existence.

"Inextricable" continues at White Cube through October 18 and at Thaddaeus Ropac through November 8, offering Seoul residents and visitors an extended opportunity to engage with Gormley's provocative meditation on bodies, cities, and the spaces we inhabit together.