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Sculptures and Site-Specific Installations
Kapoor has produced a large number of works including Taratantara
(1999, Baltic Flour Mills in Gateshead, England), a 35-metre tall piece;
and Marsyas (2002) a gigantic work of steel and PVC that was installed
in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern Gallery in London (see below).
He also created a stone arch which is permanently placed on the shore
of a lake in Lødingen in northern Norway. In 2000, one of the artist’s
works, Parabolic Waters, consisting of rapidly rotating coloured
water, was shown outside the Millennium Dome in London. In 2001, Sky
Mirror, a large mirror work which reflected the sky and environment
was commissioned in Nottingham. In 2006, another version of Sky Mirror
was displayed in the Rockefeller Center, New York. Throughout his career,
Kapoor has worked with engineers and architects, and insists that his
work is neither pure sculpture nor pure architecture.
Instead he says 'they are all about a certain kind of religious space'.
Note About Sculpture Appreciation
To learn how to evaluate contemporary sculptors like Anish Kapoor, see:
How to Appreciate
Modern Sculpture. For earlier works, please see: How
to Appreciate Sculpture.
Marsyas Sculpture (2002)
This sculpture was unveiled in 2002 in the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern Gallery.
It comprised 3 steel rings joined together by a single span of PVC membrane.
Two rings are positioned vertically opposite each other, while a third
is suspended parallel with the bridge. The geometry generated by the rigid
steel structures determines the overall form of the sculpture, shifting
the vertical to horizontal and back to vertical again. Kapoor began the
project in 2002, when he soon realised that the only way he could challenge
the daunting height of the Turbine Hall was to use it's length. Over many
months he explored the potential of the design through a series of drawings
and sculptural maquettes. The relationship between viewer and human scale
was central to the thinking behind the work. The PVC membrane has a fleshy
quality, which Kapoor describes as being 'rather like a flayed skin'.
It is impossible to view the sculpture from one angle, one needs to walk
around it, to experience the construction as a whole.
Cloud Gate: Millennium Park Sculpture (2004)
This was Kapoor's first American site-specific sculpture unveiled in 2004.
The 110-ton sculpture is based at Millennium Park in Chicago. It is forged
from a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates. It forms
an elliptical arched, highly reflected work which reflects Chicago's skyline.
Visitors are able to appreciate its majesty by working through and around
it. Inspired by the look of liquid mercury, the sculpture is one of the
largest in the world and measures 33-feet in height and 66-feet in width.
The work was installed on Millennium Parks SBC Plaza. Kapoor wrote about
the sculpture: "What I wanted to do in Millennium Park is make something
that would engage the Chicago skyline... so that one sees the clouds kind
of floating in, with those very tall buildings reflected in the work.
And then, since it is in the form of a gate, the participant, the viewer,
will be able to enter into this very deep chamber that does, in a way,
the same thing to one's reflection as the exterior of the piece is doing
to the reflection of the city around".
Memory Steel sculpture, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2008)
With the inauguration of the Guggenheim
Berlin in 1997, the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank
launched a program of contemporary art commissions. Anish Kapoor's Memory
was the 14th commission project to be completed since the program started.
Memory (2008) is a site-specific work that was conceived to work
between two different exhibition locations, the Guggenheim museums in
Berlin and New York. Using Cor-Ten steel, Memory's thin skin is
only 8 mm thick, suggesting an ephemeral form. The 24-ton sculpture appears
to defy gravity as it hangs from the gallery walls and ceiling. Wedged
tightly within artificial walls, Memory is never fully exposed
to the viewer. Instead you are required to navigate the museum, in search
of vantage points. This way the viewer is required to piece together the
fragments into one, from their own memory, a process the artist describes
as 'mental sculpture'. Some vantage points offer a 2 dimensional plane
that can be read as a painting. Kapoor’s interest in this pictorial
effect was best reflected in his statement 'I am a painter working as
a sculptor.'
Exhibitions
One of the most celebrated abstract sculptors
in British postmodernist art, Kapoor
has had solo exhibitions in international venues including the Kunsthalle
Basel, Tate Modern and Hayward Gallery in London, Reina Sofia in Madrid
and CAPC in Bordeaux. He has also participated in group shows at the Whitechapel
Art Gallery, The Royal Academy and Serpentine Gallery in London; Documenta
IX in Kassel, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and the French Museum of Modern
Art at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. His work is on display in a number
of the best art museums and cultural
institutions including: Museum of Contemporary Art in Prato, Italy; Musee
St. Pierre, Lyon; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. His
work is collected by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Tate Modern,
London, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the De Pont Foundation in Holland and
the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan.
Kapoor represented Britain at the 1990 Venice Biennale and won the Premio
Duemila with his work. In 1991 he won the prestigious Turner Prize. In
2010 he began work on the £2.7m public
art work called Temenos in collaboration with Cecil Balmond.
The sculpture is to be placed near Middlesbrough's Transporter Bridge,
UK.
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