In 1995 Anish Kapoor started working on a series of works made of stainless steel and polished to a high degree, creating a very reflective surface. This was the first time the viewer was asked to engage and become a part of the work (in contrast to early void works). Since then the artist has continued his exploration of reflective surfaces - in different forms, colours and materials. As well as warping and distorting the viewer’s vision of them and the very landscape and environment in which they are sited, Kapoor’s recent mirrors extend his interest in the transcendental qualities of colour to new levels of luminosity and independent existence.

Anish Kapoor’s concave mirrors tease and test the boundaries of spatial perception. The curved, aluminum plate projects a focused image between the viewer and work. From a distance, the reflected image within the lacquered surface appears upside down alluding to the possibility of an alternate perceptual reality. The reflections discord with reality suggests an infinite and alternative space contained within the mirror, suspending the life it captures in spatiotemporal limbo. Kapoor’s ‘Mirror’ asserts its presence within the room with its vivid colour, yet behaves beyond the confines of its surface and objectness.

Nicholas Baume describes the innovation of Kapoor’s illusion:

“Contradicting the Minimalist dictum that “what you see is what you see,” Anish Kapoor’s work mounts an assault on perceptual empiricism. His work has always been about what is not seen, what is implied, or what is seen and yet contradicted by our everyday knowledge of the world.”(Nicholas Baume, exh. cat. Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston. Published by MIT Press, pp. 17.)

In Kapoor’s work, Red is the colour of paramount importance: “Red has always been at the center of everything I’ve ever done. There is something about the vastness of red which is completely physical, and that interests me.”(I Have Nothing to Say, Anish Kapoor in an interview with Mark Francis, 2nd November 2002, for the exhibition Blood Solid, organized by Mark Francis and White Cube, pp. 78.) For Kapoor red is expressive of the interior, irrevocably associated with the bodily, “red can speak of life and death.” In ‘Mirror’ the glossy, red surface consumes the viewer existentially. The deepness of its red makes it at once a void and a reflective surface, gazing back at its viewer from indeterminate space.

In 1995 Anish Kapoor started working on a series of works made of stainless steel and polished to a high degree, creating a very reflective surface. This was the first time the viewer was asked to engage and become a part of the work (in contrast to early void works). Since then the artist has continued his exploration of reflective surfaces - in different forms, colours and materials. As well as warping and distorting the viewer’s vision of them and the very landscape and environment in which they are sited, Kapoor’s recent mirrors extend his interest in the transcendental qualities of colour to new levels of luminosity and independent existence.

Anish Kapoor’s concave mirrors tease and test the boundaries of spatial perception. The curved, aluminum plate projects a focused image between the viewer and work. From a distance, the reflected image within the lacquered surface appears upside down alluding to the possibility of an alternate perceptual reality. The reflections discord with reality suggests an infinite and alternative space contained within the mirror, suspending the life it captures in spatiotemporal limbo. Kapoor’s ‘Mirror’ asserts its presence within the room with its vivid colour, yet behaves beyond the confines of its surface and objectness.

Nicholas Baume describes the innovation of Kapoor’s illusion:

“Contradicting the Minimalist dictum that “what you see is what you see,” Anish Kapoor’s work mounts an assault on perceptual empiricism. His work has always been about what is not seen, what is implied, or what is seen and yet contradicted by our everyday knowledge of the world.”(Nicholas Baume, exh. cat. Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston. Published by MIT Press, pp. 17.)

In Kapoor’s work, Red is the colour of paramount importance: “Red has always been at the center of everything I’ve ever done. There is something about the vastness of red which is completely physical, and that interests me.”(I Have Nothing to Say, Anish Kapoor in an interview with Mark Francis, 2nd November 2002, for the exhibition Blood Solid, organized by Mark Francis and White Cube, pp. 78.) For Kapoor red is expressive of the interior, irrevocably associated with the bodily, “red can speak of life and death.” In ‘Mirror’ the glossy, red surface consumes the viewer existentially. The deepness of its red makes it at once a void and a reflective surface, gazing back at its viewer from indeterminate space.

In 1995 Anish Kapoor started working on a series of works made of stainless steel and polished to a high degree, creating a very reflective surface. This was the first time the viewer was asked to engage and become a part of the work (in contrast to early void works). Since then the artist has continued his exploration of reflective surfaces - in different forms, colours and materials. As well as warping and distorting the viewer’s vision of them and the very landscape and environment in which they are sited, Kapoor’s recent mirrors extend his interest in the transcendental qualities of colour to new levels of luminosity and independent existence.

Anish Kapoor’s concave mirrors tease and test the boundaries of spatial perception. The curved, aluminum plate projects a focused image between the viewer and work. From a distance, the reflected image within the lacquered surface appears upside down alluding to the possibility of an alternate perceptual reality. The reflections discord with reality suggests an infinite and alternative space contained within the mirror, suspending the life it captures in spatiotemporal limbo. Kapoor’s ‘Mirror’ asserts its presence within the room with its vivid colour, yet behaves beyond the confines of its surface and objectness.

Nicholas Baume describes the innovation of Kapoor’s illusion:

“Contradicting the Minimalist dictum that “what you see is what you see,” Anish Kapoor’s work mounts an assault on perceptual empiricism. His work has always been about what is not seen, what is implied, or what is seen and yet contradicted by our everyday knowledge of the world.”(Nicholas Baume, exh. cat. Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston. Published by MIT Press, pp. 17.)

In Kapoor’s work, Red is the colour of paramount importance: “Red has always been at the center of everything I’ve ever done. There is something about the vastness of red which is completely physical, and that interests me.”(I Have Nothing to Say, Anish Kapoor in an interview with Mark Francis, 2nd November 2002, for the exhibition Blood Solid, organized by Mark Francis and White Cube, pp. 78.) For Kapoor red is expressive of the interior, irrevocably associated with the bodily, “red can speak of life and death.” In ‘Mirror’ the glossy, red surface consumes the viewer existentially. The deepness of its red makes it at once a void and a reflective surface, gazing back at its viewer from indeterminate space.

In 1995 Anish Kapoor started working on a series of works made of stainless steel and polished to a high degree, creating a very reflective surface. This was the first time the viewer was asked to engage and become a part of the work (in contrast to early void works). Since then the artist has continued his exploration of reflective surfaces - in different forms, colours and materials. As well as warping and distorting the viewer’s vision of them and the very landscape and environment in which they are sited, Kapoor’s recent mirrors extend his interest in the transcendental qualities of colour to new levels of luminosity and independent existence.

Anish Kapoor’s concave mirrors tease and test the boundaries of spatial perception. The curved, aluminum plate projects a focused image between the viewer and work. From a distance, the reflected image within the lacquered surface appears upside down alluding to the possibility of an alternate perceptual reality. The reflections discord with reality suggests an infinite and alternative space contained within the mirror, suspending the life it captures in spatiotemporal limbo. Kapoor’s ‘Mirror’ asserts its presence within the room with its vivid colour, yet behaves beyond the confines of its surface and objectness.

Nicholas Baume describes the innovation of Kapoor’s illusion:

“Contradicting the Minimalist dictum that “what you see is what you see,” Anish Kapoor’s work mounts an assault on perceptual empiricism. His work has always been about what is not seen, what is implied, or what is seen and yet contradicted by our everyday knowledge of the world.”(Nicholas Baume, exh. cat. Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston. Published by MIT Press, pp. 17.)

In Kapoor’s work, Red is the colour of paramount importance: “Red has always been at the center of everything I’ve ever done. There is something about the vastness of red which is completely physical, and that interests me.”(I Have Nothing to Say, Anish Kapoor in an interview with Mark Francis, 2nd November 2002, for the exhibition Blood Solid, organized by Mark Francis and White Cube, pp. 78.) For Kapoor red is expressive of the interior, irrevocably associated with the bodily, “red can speak of life and death.” In ‘Mirror’ the glossy, red surface consumes the viewer existentially. The deepness of its red makes it at once a void and a reflective surface, gazing back at its viewer from indeterminate space.