Kapoor’s Void

Leviathan (interior), 2011Anish Kapoor, at the Guggenheim Bilbao, March 2010Anish Kapoor is an Indian-born British sculptor, having lived and work in London since the early 1970s. He first came to notice with his biomorphic sculptures made from elemental materials such as granite, limestone, marble, pigment and plaster. In September 2009 he became the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.

I first discovered his work in the early 1990s. I remember pieces like black holes: dark blue eggs and domes, such as At the Hub of Things, exhibited in a stark white room. They yawned their vastness into eternity, swallowing the light. These were relatively small pieces, yet their impenetrable solidity seemed somehow to convey an immense presence – like the enigmatic obelisks in Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. They confound and defy you, yet offer a wordless challenge.

At the Hub of Things, 1987. Image from Well this is new.Kapoor said then of his work, “In the end, I’m talking about myself. And thinking about making nothing, which I see as a void. But then that’s something, even though it really is nothing.”

His work grew bigger and bigger, until they were really set on a vast scale, engulfing the landscape, imposing their enormity on tiny human beings reduced to the size of grasshoppers. You stepped into his work – literally – and entered another universe where time stopped. Smaller pieces, mirrors, reflected their surroundings, disappearing into the landscape.

Dirty Corner, 2011

Leviathan, 2011Of the extraordinary Leviathan, which was the annual ‘Monumenta’ installation at the Grand Palais in Paris, Kapoor says, “A single object, a single form, a single colour... My ambition is to create a space with in a space that responds to the height and luminosity of the Nave at the Grand Palais. Visitors will be invited to walk inside the work, to immerse themselves in colour, and it will, I hope, be a contemplative and poetic experience.”

Explore his work in greater detail on his wonderful website. At first the single page of text can be mind-boggling, and finding a particular piece can be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but the picking the way through the trail is rewarding. There are numerous galleries of his pieces, as well as works on paper, his sketchbooks and links to press material. 

Tall Tree and the Eye, 2009Cloud Gate, 2004. Image from Life. Style. etc
Sky Mirror, Red, 2006Untitled, gouache on paper, 2010

Leviathan, a work in progress; click on ‘Thought Experiment’ on Kapoor’s website and access his working process

Images from Kapoor’s website unless otherwise indicated.