Anish Kapoor

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1000 Names, 1985

Anish Kapoor (born 1954) is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Born in Bombay (Mumbai), India, Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s when he moved to London to study art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea School of Art Design.

Kapoor rose quickly to prominence in the 1980s. He has since gained international acclaim, exhibiting extensively worldwide at venues such as Tate Gallery and Hayward Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Basel, Munich, Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, Reina Sofia in Madrid, MAK Vienna, ICA Boston and Kunsthale Basel.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held in the Tate and Hayward Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, Reina Sofia in Madrid, the National Gallery in Ottawa, Musee des arts contemporains (Grand-Hornu) in Belgium, the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux and at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Brazil. His work is collected worldwide, notably by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, Fondazione Prada in Milan, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the De Pont Foundation in the Netherlands and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan.

Kapoor represented Britain in the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990, when he was awarded the Premio Duemila Prize and in 1991 he received the Turner Prize. He has undertaken a number of major large-scale installations and commissions including Marsyas for the Turbine Hall, which Cecil Balmond (of the acclaimed engineering firm ARUP) helped him to realise [1], Tate Modern. Aclaimed public sculptures include Cloud Gate, Millennium Park, Chicago, and Sky Mirror at the Rockefeller Centre, New York.

Anish Kapoor is a Royal Academician. He was awarded a CBE in 2003.

Kapoor is represented by the Lisson Gallery[2], London; Gladstone Gallery[3], New York and Galleria Continua[4] and Galleria Massimo Manini, Italy.

Contents

[edit] Education

Kapoor’s spent his early years in India at the Doon School. Later he moved to Britain to attend Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art Design in the UK.

[edit] Works

Kapoor's pieces are frequently simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured. Most often, the intention is to engage the viewer, evoking mystery through the works' dark cavities, awe through their size and simple beauty, tactility through their inviting surfaces and fascination through their reflective facades. His early pieces rely on powder pigment to cover the works and the floor around them. This practice was inspired by the mounds of brightly coloured pigment in the markets and temples of India. His later works are made of solid, quarried stone, many of which have carved apertures and cavities, often alluding to, and playing with, dualities (earth-sky, matter-spirit, lightness-darkness, visible-invisible, conscious-unconscious, male-female and body-mind). His most recent works are mirror-like, reflecting or distorting the viewer and surroundings.

Cloud Gate, Millennium Park, Chicago, 2004

Kapoor has produced a number of large works, including Taratantara (1999), a 35 metre-tall piece installed in the Baltic Flour Mills in Gateshead, England before renovation began there and Marsyas (2002), a large work of steel and PVC that was installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. A stone arch by Kapoor is permanently placed at the shore of a lake in Lødingen in northern Norway. In 2000, one of Kapoor'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 piece that reflects the sky and surroundings, was commissioned in Nottingham. In 2004, Cloud Gate, a 110-ton stainless steel sculpture, was unveiled at Millennium Park in Chicago. In the Fall of 2006, another large mirror sculpture, also enititled Sky Mirror, was shown in Rockefeller Center, New York. Soon to be completed are a memorial to the British victims of 9/11 in New York,[5] and the design and construction of a subway station in Naples, Italy.[6] Kapoor has also been commissioned to produce five pieces of public art by Tees Valley Regeneration (TVR)[7] collectively known as the "Tees Valley Giants"[8] In late 2007, a work of Kapoor's sold for $2.5 million, above its estimated value of $1.5-2 million dollars.[9]

In 2007, Kapoor showed Svayambh, a 1.5 metre carved block of red wax that moved on rails through the Nantes Musée des Beaux-Arts as part of the Biennale estuaire; this piece was shown again in a major show at the Haus Der Kunst in Munich. Kapoor's recent work increasingly blurs the boundaries between architecture and art.

In 2008, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston exhibited Kapoor's first U.S. mid-career survey. [10] In the same year, Kapoor created the sculpture "Memory" in Berlin for the Guggenheim Foundation.

When asked if engagement with people and places is the key to successful public art, Kapoor said,

“ I’m thinking about the mythical wonders of the world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Tower of Babel. It’s as if the collective will comes up with something that has resonance on an individual level and so becomes mythic. I can claim to take that as a model for a way of thinking. Art can do it, and I’m going to have a damn good go. I want to occupy the territory, but the territory is an idea and a way of thinking as much as a context that generates objects.[1] ”

[edit] Architectural Projects

Throughout his career, Kapoor has worked extensively with architects and engineers. Kapoor insists that this body of work is neither pure sculpture nor pure architecture, "they are all about a certain kind of religious space". Notable architectural projects include the recently announced Tees Valley "Giants", the worlds five largest sculptures in collaboration with Cecil Balmond of ARUP AGU, two subways in Naples in collaboration with Future Systems, an unrealised project for the Millennium Dome, London, (1995) in collaboration with Philip Gumuchdjian, a proposal for the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain and "Building for a Void", created for Expo '92, Seville, in collaboration with David Connor. “Taratantara” (1999-2000) was installed at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and later at Piazza Plebiscito, Naples.

[edit] Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions and Projects

“Shooting into the Corner”, MAK Vienna – 21st January-19th April 2009
Brighton Festival, 2nd-23rd May 2009
Royal Academy, London - 19th September-13th December 2009
“Memory”, Guggenheim, New York – 9th October 2009

[edit] Awards

Kapoor represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, 1990, where he was awarded the Premio Duemila. The following year, he won the prestigious Turner Prize.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held in the Tate and Hayward Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, Reina Sofia in Madrid, the National Gallery in Ottawa, Musee des arts contemporains (Grand-Hornu) in Belgium, the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux and at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Brazil. His work is collected worldwide, notably by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, Fondazione Prada in Milan, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the De Pont Foundation in the Netherlands and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Sarah Kent (December/January 2008), Mr. Big Stuff, Modern Painters, http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/29161/mr-big-stuff/, retrieved on 2008-12-15 
  2. ^ Anish Kapoor at Lisson Gallery
  3. ^ Anish Kapoor at Gladstone Gallery
  4. ^ Anish Kapoor at Galleria Continua
  5. ^ British Memorial Garden
  6. ^ Neville Wakefield. "A Colossal Talent"Interior Design, 8/1/2003.
  7. ^ Tees Valley Regeneration
  8. ^ untitled
  9. ^ Auction Results: Anish Kapoor's Untitled
  10. ^ Sebastian Smee. Anish Kapoor challenges perceptions in a mind-bending show at the ICA. The Boston Globe, May 30, 2008.
  11. ^ Paul Willis and agencies. Turner prize artist's work 'dumped in skip' Daily Telegraph, 17 Mar 2007.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anish_Kapoor"
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