Anish Kapoor: New Sculptures Burst Forward Into Outer Space

Anish Kapoor,Lisson Gallery

Anish Kapoor has announced a major new gallery exhibition of work at Lisson in London. The exhibition unveils a new series of sculptures covered in a permeable and translucent mesh, simultaneously wrapping and revealing the inner forms that are protruding and bursting forward into outer space. The geological, corporeal shapes beneath this skin suggest natural processes being held at bay, albeit only by a gossamer-thin membrane, ready to explode.

“Our collaborations with Anish have helped shape the gallery’s history” – Nicholas Logsdail

These new works relate to a series that Kapoor has been working on for many years but showing only for the last two, including a triptych of paintings first exhibited at Lisson Gallery in 2015 which then travelled to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam in 2016 and MACRO, Rome in 2017. The new exhibition at Lisson Gallery will also include a number of significant works on paper made over the past six years.

Kapoor has been represented by Lisson Gallery since 1982. This will be his sixteenth exhibition at the gallery, which this year celebrates 50 years of working with artists and making exhibitions.

In January, Anish Kapoor was awarded the 2017 Genesis Prize and pledged to give the $1m prize money to help refugees.

In May, the artist will present his celebrated installation Descension, a perpetual black whirlpool, in Brooklyn Bridge Park, as part of the Public Art Fund’s 40th-anniversary celebrations in New York.

Lisson Founder, Nicholas Logsdail, says: “Lisson Gallery has worked with Anish for nearly four decades. Our collaborations with Anish have helped shape the gallery’s history and we are honoured to host an exhibition of his new work at a moment that marks 50 years of our existence.”

Anish Kapoor is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Perhaps most famous for public sculptures that are both adventures in form and feats of engineering, he manoeuvres between vastly different scales, across numerous series of work. Immense PVC skins, stretched or deflated; concave or convex mirrors whose reflections attract and swallow the viewer; recesses carved in stone and pigmented so as to disappear: these voids and protrusions summon up deep-felt metaphysical polarities of presence and absence, concealment and revelation. Forms turn themselves inside out, womb-like, and materials are not painted but impregnated with colour, as if to negate the idea of an outer surface, inviting the viewer to the inner reaches of the imagination. Kapoor’s geometric forms from the early 1980s, for example, rise up from the floor and appear to be made of pure pigment, while the viscous, blood-red wax sculptures from the last ten years – kinetic and self-generating – ravage their own surfaces and explode the quiet of the gallery environment.

Anish Kapoor was born in Mumbai, India in 1954 and lives and works in London. He studied at Hornsey College of Art, London, UK (1973–77) followed by postgraduate studies at Chelsea School of Art, London, UK (1977–78). Recent major solo exhibitions include Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico (2016); Couvent de la Tourette, Eveux, France (2015); Château de Versailles, France (2015) and The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow, Russia (2015). He represented Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 with Void Field (1989), for which he was awarded the Premio Duemila for Best Young Artist. Kapoor won the Turner Prize in 1991 and has honorary fellowships from the University of Wolverhampton, UK (1999), the Royal Institute of British Architecture, London, UK (2001) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford, UK (2014). Anish Kapoor was awarded a CBE in 2003 and a Knighthood in 2013 for services to visual arts. Large-scale public projects include Cloud Gate (2004) in Millennium Park, Chicago, USA and ArcelorMittal Orbit (2012) in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, UK. His first exhibition in an Italian museum in 10 years at MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma runs until 17 April 2017.

Anish Kapoor  Lisson Gallery 31 March – 6 May 2017  67 Lisson Street, London

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