PRESENTATION: Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor combines Eastern heritage with Western influence and as a result makes truly international art, most famous for public sculptures that are both adventures in form and feats of engineering, Anish Kapoor manoeuvres between vastly different scales, across numerous series of work. Forms turn themselves inside out, and materials are not painted but impregnated with color, as if to negate the idea of an outer surface, inviting the viewer to the inner reaches of the imagination.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galleria Continua Archive

In this solo show in Burj Al Arab Jumeirah Hotel, Anish Kapoor presents a series of previously unseen works that confirm the infinite capacity for reinvention in his artistic practice. Anish Kapoor describes himself as a painter who is a sculptor. For him, sculpture has always been about presence in the world; as evanescent as this presence can be. “That’s the nature of painting. It’s a mindscape or a soulscape, whereas on that level sculpture would be a bodyscape.” Creating a point of intersection between the two disciplines, the physicality of his works always points to a place beyond, guided by the means of illusion. In the two rarely seen alabaster sculptures, Kapoor has carefully carved out a highly refined section into the initial square cube of mineral. Playing with light and one’s senses and perception, they invite the spectator to reflect upon the concept of the infinite and the mysteries of time buried within form and substance. Thanks to the translucent qualities of the material, the artist manages to reinforce the sense of transition from painting to sculpture and from painting to aerial dissolution, to finally becoming light. With “Red Satin and Black Mist” and “Spanish Gold to Magenta Satin” (both 2019), Kapoor further explores the symbolism of color, using a deep sense of materiality to create an object that shifts one’s perception of its own environment. At once intimate and imposing, the works implicate viewers as they become participants within the work’s undulating landscape; standing before its cavernous surface, the viewer is enveloped into a world of color. Kapoor himself refers to these works as “non-objects” as their reflective surface allows the sculpture to disappear within its surroundings. The sculptures create a new space, suspended between darkness and light, a vertiginous immateriality and boundless depths, which transcend these dualistic boundaries and generate uncertainty. The foundation of Kapoor’s plastic and aesthetic research lies within this specific space, where subject and object differentiate. The series of works titled “Alice-Triangle”, “Alice-Square” and “Alice-Oval” (all 2017) investigate the source of Kapoor’s research and his questioning of the mirrored surface. Creating a phenomenological experience for his viewers, Kapoor encapsulates other geometrical shapes within a circular surface, adding a disruption of perception, time and space. Anish Kapoor’s exhibition with Galleria Continua in Burj Al Arab Jumeirah reveals the sublime and mystery he has managed to excavate from an in-depth investigation of materiality and color, inviting the audience to step into a new, shifted reality.

Photo: Anish Kapoor, Disc, 2010, alabaster, 103 x 104 x 46 cm / 40.55 x 40.94 x 18.11 in, unique work, © Anish Kapoor, Photo: Adham Almalla, Courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua

Info: Burj Al Arab Jumeirah, Umm Suqeim 3, Dubai, UAE, Duration: 21/11/2021-30/1/2022, Days & Hours: by registration only (Register here), www.galleriacontinua.com