Watch now: Anish Kapoor at Lisson Gallery, New York
20 November 2019
One of the defining languages of Anish Kapoor's oeuvre is indisputably his manipulation of space, and the mirrored surface as a material in this endeavor can be seen internationally through his major public commissions. These highly reflective works combine a painterly subtlety with a powerful monumentality, contrasting the stillness of a flawlessly polished surface with an ever-oscillating echo of its environment. Two major new stainless steel works, Tsunami (2018) and Newborn (2019), sit at the core of the Lisson Gallery exhibition in New York. These large-scale, mesmerising artworks come together with intertwining curvatures as seamlessly fluid forms. Each transcends the boundaries of their volume, capturing a metaphorical infinity across an indescribable surface.
Tsunami derives its form from the projection of a circle onto an hourglass, a historic symbol connected to the sign of infinity and the endless time of a Möbius strip. The raised edge of the sculpture invites the audience to gaze into a self-reflecting void where their reflection descends into an ambiguous limitless space. The area beneath the sculpture becomes, like in many of Kapoor’s works, a negative one, a void.
Newborn takes its name from Brancusi’s stylised depictions of infant faces made from marble, brass and wood. Kapoor re-presents decisively modernist forms through clean geometries – a perfect sphere interrupted by two upward facing convex slices which culminate in a curved central ridge. Simultaneously dominating the terrain and dissolving into it, this impressive nearly ten foot tall sculpture hovers gracefully on the ground at a single precise point, miraculously poised and balanced.
The exhibition continues at Lisson Gallery, 504 West 24th Street, New York through Friday, December 20. Click here to learn more.