(© Anish Kapoor courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels)
From stainless steel to silicone mixed with pigment, from an organic mass to the purest geometric rigour: the Anish Kapoor solo exhibition at Gladstone Gallery offers a fine overview of the British-Indian star’s vast technical and expressive range.
Presenting works by Anish Kapoor today, it must be said, is a bit like enclosing a wild animal that loves wide open spaces in a cage so small that it is immobilised and one can no longer observe the beauty of its muscles in movement. Gladstone has, however, successfully met the challenge. OK, anyone who saw – at the MAC’s or elsewhere – the enormous installation My Red Homeland, a vast red mass of wax and Vaseline, scraped in a circle by an arm fixed at its centre, will probably not be excited by the two “miniature” versions (even though they still have a diameter of about one metre) of the process on show here. On the other hand, even those who have walked inside the concave room of Cloud Gate in Chicago, an immense, shimmering public sculpture nicknamed “the bean” because of its shape, will surely not be immune to the charms of Double Vertigo (photo), which is on display in the main space of the Lempertz auction rooms. Placed face to face on the parquet floor of this sumptuous art nouveau residence, two large curved mirrors create at their heart a sort of acoustic and visual bubble in which one is brought face to face with one’s reflection and with the reflections of one’s reflection, deformed, enlarged, and multiplied.
Paradoxically, the effect is even more disconcerting in the two little steel and gold mirrors hung on the walls at Gladstone. From a distance, they seem harmless, but when you get closer, the image they face you with provokes a striking blurring of vision that is almost enough to make you lose your balance. The same uncomfortable, highly physical sensation recurs in front of two pieces composed of silicone and pigment entitled Keriah, a reference to a Jewish tradition in which those close to the deceased tear their clothes at the level of the heart during the funeral ceremony as a sign of mourning. The brilliant texture and the dark red and violet shades in these sculptures evoke a heart in shreds, but still beating. A powerful image!
ANISH KAPOOR ••••
> 17/4, Gladstone Gallery & Lempertz 1845, www.gladstonegallery.com
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