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Lot Essay
‘I do not want to make sculpture about form - it doesn’t really interest me. I wish to make sculpture about belief, or about passion, about experience that is outside of material concern.’
—ANISH KAPOOR
Anish Kapoor’s vision of worlds-within-worlds is stunningly realised in Levitation (2003), a proto-ovoid form of black granite polished to gleaming, reflective brilliancy. As light bounces off the darkly mirrored surface, twisting around the deliquescent contours of the granite, the viewer is confronted with a spectral, illusionistic alternative reality contained within the object lying before them. Kapoor has long been interested in the nature of reflection and surface, producing several extraordinary large-scale works in stainless steel around the turn of the century; often working with large concave forms, Kapoor’s work seems to turn the physical space of his sculpture into an illusion, the object no longer an object but a window looking into another immaterial world. However, while this Levitation shares many of the formal qualities and conceptual interests of his most iconic work in stainless steel, it also offers a beguiling variation on their themes: the bright version of the world produced in their luminous glare of steel is transformed into something more shadowy in the granite, the enveloping sense of depth generated in his concave works reversed in the swell of the work’s form. A dizzying feeling of infinity remains in the play of lights which glance off the work, but the object it seems to emerge from is not erased – on the contrary, we are reminded of its robustness and physicality, even as something more ethereal seems to emanate miraculously from its centre, achieving a magical otherworldliness. ‘The interesting thing about a polished surface to me is that when it is really perfect enough something happens’ Kapoor has said, ‘it literally ceases to be physical; it levitates’ (A. Kapoor, quoted in Anish Kapoor, exh. cat., Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2008, p. 53).
—ANISH KAPOOR
Anish Kapoor’s vision of worlds-within-worlds is stunningly realised in Levitation (2003), a proto-ovoid form of black granite polished to gleaming, reflective brilliancy. As light bounces off the darkly mirrored surface, twisting around the deliquescent contours of the granite, the viewer is confronted with a spectral, illusionistic alternative reality contained within the object lying before them. Kapoor has long been interested in the nature of reflection and surface, producing several extraordinary large-scale works in stainless steel around the turn of the century; often working with large concave forms, Kapoor’s work seems to turn the physical space of his sculpture into an illusion, the object no longer an object but a window looking into another immaterial world. However, while this Levitation shares many of the formal qualities and conceptual interests of his most iconic work in stainless steel, it also offers a beguiling variation on their themes: the bright version of the world produced in their luminous glare of steel is transformed into something more shadowy in the granite, the enveloping sense of depth generated in his concave works reversed in the swell of the work’s form. A dizzying feeling of infinity remains in the play of lights which glance off the work, but the object it seems to emerge from is not erased – on the contrary, we are reminded of its robustness and physicality, even as something more ethereal seems to emanate miraculously from its centre, achieving a magical otherworldliness. ‘The interesting thing about a polished surface to me is that when it is really perfect enough something happens’ Kapoor has said, ‘it literally ceases to be physical; it levitates’ (A. Kapoor, quoted in Anish Kapoor, exh. cat., Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2008, p. 53).