Lisson

Anish Kapoor

13 Oct - 18 Nov 2006

Anish Kapoor
13/10/2006 - 18/11/2006
Location: 29 & 52-54 Bell Street

Lisson Gallery announces a new exhibition of seven new large-scale sculptures by Anish Kapoor opening 12th October, comprising the most ambitious Lisson show the artist has undertaken in his 25-year history with the gallery. This show marks the first time one artist has made a single exhibition using all available gallery spaces. Renowned for his enigmatic sculptural forms, this exciting new body of work finds Kapoor continuing his exploration of metaphysical polarities: presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place, the solid versus the intangible. Further to his ongoing concerns with human presence and perception, Kapoor investigates the ephemeral nature of sight, and examines the role of the psyche in our interpretation of visual stimuli. In each of Lisson Gallery spaces the artist will exhibit a different aspect of his work. In the main gallery, a wall slowly moves through the space describing a blood red hemisphere. This “proto-object” of pure colour is formed by the movement of the wall. In another room a 12m mirrored arc plays with light and reflection creating such physical tension that the viewer feels at a crossroads between the real and the unreal. Elsewhere, the glistening surface and seductive void of an opalescent “pocket piece” suggest myths of origin or, in the words of cultural critic Homi K. Bhabha, “ excessive engendering emptiness.” Kapoor will also be unveiling collaboration with author Salman Rushdie. Though Kapoor is known for his collaborative projects with other celebrated cultural figures, this is his first project with a writer and also marks the first time that he has worked with text. This sculpture is the culmination of a 20-year dialogue between the two, ultimately conceived during a series of visits Rushdie made to the artist's studio. This dialogue resulted in a mesmeric sculpture consisting of two bronze boxes conjoined with red wax and inscribed around the outside with the first two paragraphs of Rushdie's text; “Blood Relations, or an Interrogation of the Arabian Nights”. “I've responded very strongly to the sensuality of Anish's forms and to his ability to remain lyrical even when he works on an immense scale” says Rushdie, “we share a strong interest in the continuing power of myth, and [his] forms, though they clearly belong to his own universe of shape, arise out of an interest, very similar to my own, in the physicality of the body and the existing world of phenomena.” Finally, Kapoor will devote one room in the gallery to the maquettes of critically acclaimed public commissions including Marsyas, Tate Modern Turbine Hall, 2002 and Cloud Gate, Millennium Park, Chicago, 2004, and the Monte Sant'Angelo underground stations in Naples with Future Systems. Born in Bombay, India, Kapoor was educated at Chelsea School of Art and has lived and worked in London since the early 1970's. He is one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work has been exhibited world-wide and is held in numerous private and public collections including the Tate Collection, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Palacio de Velazquez, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1991 Anish Kapoor was awarded the coveted Turner Prize after winning the Premio 2000 in 1990. As his contribution to Documenta IX in 1992, he designed the building Decent into Limbo, while in the same year completing a large architectural work entitled Building for a Void, commissioned by Expo Seville. In February of 1999 the South Bank show featured Kapoor in a major full-length television profile. Upcoming projects this year include his installation of Sky Mirror for the Public Art Fund in New York City's Rockefeller Plaza, in September.

© Anish Kapoor / Lisson Gallery 2005
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