INVC NEWS
New York,
Since the mid-1990s, Kapoor has explored the notion of the void by creating works that seem to recede into the distance, disappear into walls or floors, or otherwise destabilize assumptions about the physical world. Descension realizes a long-held aspiration of the artist to create a negative space alive with energy, continuously in process. 26-feet in diameter, the spiraling funnel of water is treated with an all-natural black dye, creating an opaque, seemingly endless hole. The whirling pool will be surrounded by a railing, inviting audiences to peer into its dark depths. Through this transformation of properties inherent to materials and objects, Kapoor blurs the boundaries between nature, landscape, and art, allowing us to perceive space differently.
“Anish Kapoor reminds us of the contingency of appearances: our senses inevitably deceive us. With Descension, he creates an active object that resonates with changes in our understanding and experience of the world,” said Baume. “In this way, Kapoor is interested in what we don’t know rather than in what we do, understanding that the limit of perception is also the threshold of human imagination.”
First envisioned as a smaller, interior work for India’s Kochi-Muziris biennale (2014-15), Descension was later re-imagined as a large-scale outdoor piece for Kapoor’s solo exhibition at Versailles (2015). This will be the first time the artist brings Descension to North America, giving visitors a unique chance to experience one of Kapoor’s most innovative new works.
Anish Kapoor, who is one of the most prominent sculptors of his generation, works in a wide variety of scales and formats, and in a range of media including pigment, stone, stainless steel, resin, wax, earth, and silicone. Over the last four decades, he has created a remarkably inventive and resonant body of work layered with artistic, cultural, and personal associations. Kapoor is well known for his captivating outdoor and indoor site-responsive works in which he marries a Modernist sense of pure materiality with a fascination for the manipulation of form and the perception of space. Born in Bombay, he moved to London in the 1970s to study art, first working on abstract yet evocative sculptures using elemental natural materials such as pigment, stone, and plaster. His sculptures reinvent the formal language of minimalism through the use of deep, resonant colors, sensuously refined textures and surfaces, and optical effects of depth and dimension.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Anish Kapoor will give a Public Art Fund Talk in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School on May 3 where he will discuss his installation as it relates to his art practice and public space.
This exhibition is curated by Public Art Fund Director and Chief Curator Nicholas Baume.