“To make new art you have to make a new space.” 
—Anish Kapoor

Shimmering with a warm iridescence and radiating light from its concave copper surface, Untiled, from 2012, is an immersive example of British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor’s celebrated series of wall-mounted mirrored sculptures. Supremely elegant in its execution, seen from a distance the copper disc appears to float suspended before us, its gently undulating surface shifting like the rising sun. The serene undulations of the copper are especially enhanced by Kapoor's lacquering of the sides and reverse of the work in deep red tones, intensifying the visual effects of the copper when caught from the side. 

 

 

Radically destabilising boundaries between inside and out, our physical bodies and their reflected image, approaching this rippling copper pool we, like Ovid’s Narcissus, find ourselves drawn further into its liquid depths, mesmerised by the inverted, shifting world beyond the surface. Animated in this manner, the concave surface of Untitled recasts the world as a stage, with the body and the self reimagined as more fluid entities within it. As Kapoor lyrically describes, the ‘interesting thing about a polished surface to me is that when it is really perfect enough something happens – it literally ceases to be physical; it levitates; it does something else, especially on concave surfaces.’ⁱ Slipping between our physical reality and the one we find reflected in the distorting, surface of the bronze, we cease to be purely physical, in Kapoor’s terms.  

 

 

Shifting Worlds

 

One of the most significant and influential sculptors of his generation, Kapoor was born in Mumbai before relocating to London in the 1970s, where he has lived and work since. Kapoor’s innovative practice has seen him work across a variety of materials including raw pigment, earth, polystyrene, concrete, and felt, pushing his work into ever-more poetic territory since his earliest investigations into the possibilities of metallic and reflective surfaces generated his first mirror-polished objects in the mid-90s. Collapsing the spatial organisation of our landscape, Kapoor’s eponymous series of Sky Mirrors are especially striking in this respect, generating an illusory depth and sense of perpetual movement within their concave forms. As Stephanie Dieckvoss has described, while ‘earlier works meditated on themes of the void, emptiness and the abyss, these sculptures engage viewers directly, literally turning our view of the world on its head’.ⁱⁱ

 

Starting compelling conversations around our experience of space, the contemporary sublime, and the nature of reality and perception that has come to define a central aspect of the Turner Prize-winning artist’s practice, Kapoor’s adoption of the concave form would prove decisive in this ‘'new spatial adventure’ that he found himself off upon.’ⁱⁱⁱ As the artist describes, ‘suddenly this was not just a camouflaged object; it seemed to be a space full of mirror just like the previous works had been a space full of darkness […] a different order or object from a mirrored exterior.’^vi

 

Bronze and the Morphology of Form

“Bronze is the mirror of form, wine of the heart.” 
—Aeschylus

Fascinated by the spatial qualities of these objects, Kapoor lyrically describes the manner in which ‘it seemed it was not a mirrored object but an object full of mirroredness […] a whole new spatial adventure.’^v Bronze especially lent itself to this task, as the supple elegance of Constantin Brancusi’s highly polished convex forms and series of heads had powerfully demonstrated a century earlier. Coupling this polished perfection with a concave surface Kapoor quickly discovered precisely the morphological potential that he was pursuing, with beguiling results.
 

 

A testament to its central importance in Kapoor’s oeuvre, as well as in 20^th century sculptural practice more broadly, Untitled was included in the innovative 2012 exhibition Bronze, held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Highlighting the centrality and versatility of the material, the exhibition positioned bronze as ‘a universal artistic medium […] a material that has been used by almost every sculptor of note.’^iv Presented alongside exquisite examples of ancient statuary, Renaissance masterpieces and modern masterpieces by the likes of Constantin Brancusi and Henri Matisse, Untitled was one of very few contemporary examples included. Indeed, as the most recently executed work included in the show, Untiled not only positions Kapoor’s as inheritor to a deep and vitally important art historical tradition, but emphasises his radically innovative approach to the medium.

 

Collector’s Digest

• The subject of extensive solo exhibitions and with examples of his work housed in preeminent collections worldwide, Anish Kapoor is the first British artist to be honoured with a major, dual-gallery exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Academia and Palazzo Manfrin in Venice, running alongside the 59^th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2022.

• In 1990 Kapoor was selected to represent the United Kingdom at La Biennale di Venezia, where he was awarded the prestigious ‘Premio 2000’ international jury award. After winning the Turner Prize the following year, Kapoor was also awarded the Praemium Imperiale in 2011. Returning to Vencie in 2022, Kapoor staged an ambitious exhibition of works at the Galleria dell’Academia which ran alongside La Biennale di Venezia.

• With similar works now held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, amongst others, Kapoor’s mirrored sculptures have become almost synonymous with the artist’s practice.

• Most recently, Kapoor has opened an exhibition of recent works at the Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal.

 

 

ⁱ Anish Kapoor, cited in ‘Mythologies in the Making: Anish Kapoor in Conversation with Nicholas Baume’, Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future, exh. cat., Boston, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2008, p. 52. 

ⁱⁱ Stephanie Dieckvoss, in Anish Kapoor: Turning the World Upside Down in Kensington Gardens, exh. cat., London, Serpentine Gallery, 2010, p. 74.

ⁱⁱⁱ Anish Kapoor, cited in ‘Mythologies in the Making: Anish Kapoor in Conversation with Nicholas Baume’, Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future, exh. cat., Boston, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2008, p. 52. 

^vi Anbish Kapoor, cited in Hossein Amirsadeghi and Maryam Homayoun Eisler, eds., Sanctuary: Britain’s Artists and their Studios, London, 2011, p. 436.

^v Anish Kapoor, cited in ‘Mythologies in the Making: Anish Kapoor in Conversation with Nicholas Baume’, Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future, exh. cat, Boston, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2008, p. 52. 

^vi Michael Prodger, ‘Bronze beauties: sculpture at the Royal Academy’, The Guardian, 7 September, 2012, online.