Anish Kapoor: Art on the edge
His art challenges our perception: Forms vanish and perspectives shift. Anish Kapoor leads the viewer to the edge of the abyss — and sometimes, even
His art challenges our perception: Forms vanish and perspectives shift. Anish Kapoor leads the viewer to the edge of the abyss — and sometimes, even beyond. Two new exhibitions revisit his work. Anish Kapoor can demand quite a lot from his audience. For some, gazing into dark whirlpools, into the blackest of black, may be unsettling, depending on one's state of mind. Added to that is dark red wax, one of his favorite materials: It symbolizes flesh and blood. Associations that cut straight to the core. And yet, the artist seems cheerful and relaxed talking about his work. At times, however, it even makes him feel a little uneasy. Take, for example, the major exhibition of his work currently on view at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg. In an interview with ARD, he walks around "First Body," a sculpture made of resin, and says: "It is, if you like, fleshy. Sort of doing this rather strange thing," he laughs, as his shoulders shudder. Anish Kapoor's 'First Body' is currently on show at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg Image: Christoph Reichwein/dpa/picture alliance One reason why Kapoor has such a visceral reaction to his own installations is probably because be begins working with the material without knowing how it will end up. "I go into the studio and say, 'I don't know what to do.
I'm lost.' Then stuff arises and it's the thing in the room that you work with," he once told the magazine The Talks. "I'm really interested in that as a process because the process moves you in directions that you couldn't rationally put there." Kapoor's art in Chicago and Munich Born in 1954 in Bombay (today Mumbai), Anish Kapoor has long ranked among the world's best-known and most sought-after artists. He won the Turner Prize in 1991 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013. For more than 50 years, he has lived in London, and now the Hayward Gallery is dedicating a major exhibition to him. Kapoor's artworks are on permanent display in many locations across the globe, where they blend seamlessly into both urban architecture and vast natural landscapes. In Chicago, "Cloud Gate" (known locally as "The Bean") has graced the Millennium Park since 2006. It is a gigantic, bean-shaped stainless-steel sculpture that reflects the city's skyline. Anish Kapoor's 'Cloud Gate' in Chicago Image: Uwe Kraft/imageBROKER/picture alliance Since 2020, "HOWL," a massive PVC sphere, has been installed in the rotunda of Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne. Kapoor said that its reddish-brown color refers to menstrual blood. Speaking of red, Kapoor says it fascinates him. "It has a frightening kind of darkness in it," he said. But Kapoor knows that things can get even darker.
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