British artist Antony Gormley Tuesday unveiled a new sculpture on the side of a central London hotel whose interior will be used as a hotel room.

Gormley's sculpture is of a 10-meter high human figure crouched on a large plinth on the upper stories of the Beaumont Hotel.

Gormley has an international reputation as an artist, and his work often consists of life size or larger human figures crafted in metal.

The human figure/hotel room entitled "Room" is similar to but is more abstracted than Gormley's more usual work. It's limbs, torso, and head are created from cubes of hollow metal.

Gormley, whose workshop base is in north London, told Xinhua at the press launch, "The dual nature of this room is like the dual nature of the human body -- a body is a place and it is also a thing in the world and the site of life, of thought, of feeling."

Gormley added, "In the work what I have tried to do is to talk about that mind body issue by making the interior of this sculpture experienceable. This has given me the first opportunity in my life to sculpt darkness and that has been exciting."

The outside is a spectacular landmark, said Gormley, but in its interior it is a very different type of sculpture which is about forming experience.

The interior is a four meter by four meter space with a 10-meter high ceiling, said Gormley.

It is occupied only by a bed, and there is a large window in the top of the sculpture, through which only the sky can be seen.

Gormley said, "You arrive in the room naked, having left your clothes and all of your external life behind. There is basically nothing in there apart from a bed."

Despite the lack of luxuries in the bedroom -- and Gormley said he had deliberately avoided putting in even a television -- one night's stay is reported by local media to cost 2,500 pounds (about 4,189 U.S. dollars). Endi

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