ANISH KAPOOR

Through a deep-rooted impulse to experiment with the phenomenology of space, Kapoor’s oeuvre has long embraced the mirrored surface for its play with reflection and distortion, forcing the viewer to reassess their relationship to the stability of their own mirrored self in the world. Over the decades, these mirror works – as witnessed in this new body of semi-reflective, concave sculptures – have become increasingly painterly, embodying in them the artist’s own journey exploring the potential of painting through multiple mediums.

This series of works – including Wild Cherry, Magenta and Burple (2023), Clear to Purple (2024) and Dark Purple to Light Purple (2024) – fade subtly across shades of deep purple, creating a lyrical oscillation of colour that further emphasises or distorts the formal structure of the object and its reflection. The spiritual and magnetic quality of the colour derives from its existence as a horizon point; it sits between the opposing colours of blue (the source of black, the abyss and infinite heavenly sky) and red (the elemental shade of the internal, human and base). While much of Kapoor’s practice has been characterised by a powerful encounter with these two colours, the artist is now delving into the sublime meeting point of this hue, also associated with a sensation of other-worldliness, the magical and the spiritual, something just out of reach.

Kapoor has, through a committed and experimental practice since the 1980s, sought to explore and manipulate space in new ways. This has manifested in many forms: from monumental and ambitious public sculptures that inspire awe and wonder, to a suite of visceral, ethereal paintings that delve deep into the inner world of our mind and body. The mirrored, flawless concave surfaces subtly warp one’s perception of physical reality by reflecting light to pull the painted image from the traditional pictorial plane on the wall and projecting the focused image metres in front of the mirror, engrossing the viewer into a three-dimensional painterly landscape of colour.

“The interesting thing about a polished surface to me is that when it is really perfect enough it literally ceases to be physical; it levitates; it does something else, especially on concave surfaces...What happens to concave surfaces is in my view, completely beguiling. They cease to be physical and it is that ceasing to be physical that I’m after.” - Published in ’Past, Present, Future’, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston, 2008

The exhibition coincides with Kapoor’s first solo exhibition with Lisson Gallery Shanghai, Drawings, which runs until 25 January 2025. This exhibition features a series of recent gouache drawings on paper, focusing primarily on the void – a central motif for Kapoor – and the tensions between the inner and outer world, light and dark.