Anish Kapoor

Lisson Gallery, London

Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes,  2006-2008 (on temporary loan)

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the central recessed area is a softer grey hue in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The irregularities to the work's surface (as visible in the catalogue illustration) appear to be inherent to the artist's chosen medium.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"The void has many presences ... The idea of being somehow consumed by the object, or in the non-object, in the body. I have always been drawn to a notion of fear, towards a sensation of vertigo, of falling, of being pulled inwards. This is a notion of the sublime which reverses the picture of union with light. This is an inversion, a sort of turning inside-out. This is a vision of darkness." (Anish Kapoor cited in Germano Celant, Anish Kapoor, Milan 1998, p. XXXV)

Untitled from 2002 is a sublime example of Anish Kapoor's ongoing sculptural enquiry into the relationships between form, material and space. Powerful in scale, the awe-inspiring physical presence and natural beauty of this rough-hewn monolith engages the viewer at eye level, initiating a total bodily and sensory experience that is simultaneously cerebral, spiritual and intimate. One of only a handful of works that Kapoor has made on this scale in Black Belgian Granite, the stone's smooth, dark grey materiality lends itself to dramatic dualities of light and dark, infinity and illusion, and form and void that have become synonymous with Kapoor's acclaimed contribution to the current artistic landscape. As the artist explains, "One of the phenomena that I've worked with over many years is darkness. What interests me ... is the sense of the darkness that we carry within us, the darkness that's akin to one of the principal subjects of the sublime - terror. A work will only have that deep resonance that I try to indicate is there if the kind of darkness that I can generate, let's say in a block of stone with a cavity in it that's very dark, if the resonance that's in that stone is something that is resident in you already. That's to say that you are completing that circle, but perhaps without knowingly you're completing that circle. It's not a verbal connection, but a bodily one. That's why sculpture occupies the same space as your body." (Anish Kapoor interviewed by John Tusa, BBC Radio 3, 6 July 2003)

Fashioned deep into the core of this vast jagged obelisk of granite, the perfectly formed rectangular void glistens as if in a permanent state of condensed surface tension. The polished smoothness within the void and its meditative aura of fragility defy the weight and the rough-hewn edges of the rock from which it is born. This dynamic conflict between interior and exterior is one of the artist's key philosophical interests: "I'm interested in the idea that form in a sense turns itself inside out, that the inside and the outside are equivalent to each other, that we don't just enclose. The form is continually in a warp, and continually turning itself inside out." (Anish Kapoor interviewed by John Tusa, BBC Radio 3, 6 July 2003)

 

Kapoor's work exhibits an almost spiritual devotion to purity of materials and he has constantly sought to establish his sculptures as objects which are able to exist and in and communicate through their own materiality. Unlike the ubiquitous colour saturation of his earlier pigment works, the artist's stone sculptures celebrate the chastity, history and vitality of the natural materials he selects and its transformation through polished surfaces and geometric shapes into sculpture. "There is a history in the stone," he explained, "and through this simple device of excavating the stone it's as if a whole narrative sequence is suddenly there." (Germano Celant, Anish Kapoor, Milan 1998, p. 27) He has also described how "...at the end of the process... the stone becomes something else, becomes light, becomes a proposition, becomes a lens." (Ibid., p. 29)

 

This concept of the lens is central to understanding Kapoor's work and the present work exemplifies the artist's aforementioned idea that cycle of an artwork is only completed by the beholder and that the events in their experience. The artist's avowed intention has been, in the words of Marco Livingstone, "to create shapes which are timeless in nature. This is not an opportunistic attitude but a profoundly religious one, for his goal is not to bypass the material world but to transcend it."  (Marco Livingstone, Exhibition Catalogue, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Anish Kapoor: Feeling into Form, 1983, p. 27).  In Untitled, Kapoor has created a masterpiece of astonishing beauty and spirituality – centred on a void that is as enticing and mysterious as the infinity that lies in the darkness beyond Fontana's slashes: it is a monument that touches the eternal.