Art and Spirituality – Anish Kapoor

“We understand the object as a metaphor, but I think we know very little about space as a metaphor” Anish Kapoor

“Inability to tolerate empty space limits the amount of space available.”W.R. Bion, Cogitations1

London Based artist, Anish Kapoor is well known for is mysterious sculptural forms which infuse physical and psychological space. His works explore his interest in unlike materials, meditative structures and subconscious metaphysical divisions: presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place. His works are seemingly omnipresent, with corporeal aesthetics, and are intentionally made accessible to a wide public. However a closer look at these intriguing works show that they challenge the conventional ideals about scale and matter. These sculptures also redefine recognised patterns of perception, as well as promote questions in epistemological, mythical and transcendental realm – which are some of the notions behind spirituality. In order to establish a feeling of weightlessness, Kapoor employ’s an ‘alchemical’ process. He uses a wide range of materials in his practice, which he skilfully transforms, to question the conventional limits of architecture and to deconstruct experimental spaces. He produces forms which open up and expand into invisible spaces, which consequently address the physical and the immeasurable, thus leading the viewer to speculate origins and inevitability. In January 2002, Kapoor began a project called Marsyas, which was part of the Unilever Series. It was an exhibition commissioned for the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern. Marsyas was comprised of three steel rings which were joined together by a single span of PVC membrane. Two rings are placed vertically on either side of the space, and a third is suspended parallel with the bridge. The geometry created by these steel structures consequently determines the sculptures overall form; a shift form vertical to horizontal to vertical. On starting the project Kapoor realised that there was only one way of challenging the daunting height of the space, and that was paradoxically to utilise its length. In order to experience Marsyas it is necessary to walk its entire length, over it and through it. By doing this we discover the most unnerving thing is not just the size but its twisting asymmetrical form. The membrane gave the sculpture a fleshy quality, which has been described by Kapoor as being ‘rather like a flayed skin’[1]. The dark red suggests something ‘of the physical, of the earthly, of the bodily.’ Kapoor has stated, ‘I want to make body into sky.’[2] Marsyas immerses the viewer into a monochromatic field of colour, while confounding spatial perceptions. The entire sculpture cannot be viewed from any one position, instead we experience it as a series, from which we are expected to construct the whole. Clearly, there is some relationship between his sculpture and the notions of Hinduism and mysticism, and a certain belief that there exist some objects which seem to have made themselves. Critics have also found a relationship between Kapoor’s work and the Buddhist concept of the void, ‘a state of consciousness that exists outside of the material world,’[3] which suggests that the viewer might even be able to “touch” the void.

Bibliography:

• “Tate: Online.” Tate Modern (2009), http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kapoor/default.htm (accessed September 14, 2009)
• “Works.” Anish Kapoor (2009), http://www.anishkapoor.com/ (accessed September 14, 2009).
• Crone, Rainer and Von Stosch, Alexandra. Anish Kapoor. London: Prestel Publishing, 2008.
• Livingstone, Macro. Anish Kapoor: Feeling into Form. France: Walker Art Gallery, 1983.
• Heartney, Eleanor. Art and Today. New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2008.
• Serota, Nicholas. Anish Kapoor; Marsyas. London: Tate Publishing, 2003.
  
  

[1] “Tate: Online.” Tate Modern (2009), http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kapoor/default.htm (accessed September 15, 2009)
[2] Nicholas Serota, Anish Kapoor; Marsyas. (London: Tate Publishing, 2003), 61
[3] Eleanor Heartney, Art and Today. (New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2008), 285