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Lot Essay
"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness." -John Muir
“As a kid I had a fantasy that one could invent a paint that would literally paint out part of the world”
(A Kapoor quoted in A. Kapoor, M. du Sautoy and D. Leader (eds.), Turning the World Upside Down, exh. cat. Serpentine Gallery, London, 2011, p. 58).
Polished to luminous perfection, Anish Kapoor’s Mirror (Pale Tangerine to Dark Purple) alludes the viewer to the endless nature of visual possibilities. The iridescent tonal gradation from orange to purple from the upper to the lower edge compliments the upside-down image in the mirror, marking this work as an exemplary example of his signature sculptural practice of the reflective concave mirrors. Every detail is captured, reflected, and magnified in its lacquered surface, cast in a poetic transience of colors. For over 2,000 years, geometry remained flat but by utilizing the curvature, Kapoor provides the viewer with an alternative to our flat Euclidean impression of the Earth. Similarly, mirrors have also been used as lenses for understanding light in its long scientific heritage. In this case, Kapoor is the pioneer who has incorporated geometry with reflection and explored them as pieces of art for the first time.
The process of making these mirrored works is extremely meticulous and laborious as the concave surface automatically magnifies any imperfection. The metal surface has to be smoothed away until no evidence of the human hand is left. It is crucial to maintain this level of technical difficulty for Kapoor because it then becomes a device for him to achieve the ultimate ‘perfect object.’ For him, the concave mirror has a metaphysical side to it that transforms it from its physical object-hood to something beyond, creating moments when it reads as a void, as a black hole in the universe. In our encounter with interminable nothingness, all sense of self dissolves. Kapoor talked about how these works with pigment allow him to capture the infinite in a finite existence, serving as a passport to the cosmos that shows the black hole from the inside-out. Thus, the Mirror (Pale Tangerine to Dark Purple) lies in the epitome of Kapoor’s childhood fantasy.
Location plays an important part in Kapoor’s biography. He was born in India in 1954 and was educated at art schools in London during the late 70s. Although he was one of a generation of sculptors who achieved international prominence in the 1980s, he carved a distinctive path for himself, rebelling against the prevailing tradition of truth to materials in sculpture at the time. As concepts of identity, place, and history have been featured at the core of his art, these mirrored works of Kapoor appear to possess an astonishing ability of habituating their environments when being installed. They draw in their surroundings to become part of them, oftentimes looking as if they were made specifically for the locations. At close quarters Kapoor’s curved mirrors call for a viewer-friendly experience by inviting the viewer to move and to explore the ways an image could be viewed differently in relation to its space, just as how Baroque architects like Bernini and Borromini achieved the same effect by using parabolas and ellipses. Staring into its gleaming interior, the surface appears to fluctuate and ripple with every slight movement and alteration of light. In this case, Kapoor resists the traditional static viewing of artworks and prompts a more interactive one on the notion of mobility and theatricality.
By tackling the notion of the non-object, not only is Kapoor pushing himself to break the boundary of object-hood from an artistic perspective, he is also posing a philosophical question to the viewer. “‘Non-Object’ is a phrase I use to refer to many of these works. When I was making the pigment pieces, there were two fantasies about those objects: one is that they make themselves and the other is that they’re objects that are so ephemeral as to be not there, even though the color of them is so emphatic that they are very much there. And then the void objects were a literal attempt to make a hole in the space” (A. Kapoor quoted in A. Kapoor, M. du Sautoy and D. Leader (eds.), Turning the World Upside Down, exh. cat. Serpentine Gallery, London, 2011, p. 58).
This paradox reveals Kapoor’s desire to capture the intangible sensation of being tricked by a visual illusion, which can be seen as a type of contemporary sublime, sitting in dialogue with Romantic artists like Casper David Friedrich. Mirror (Pale Tangerine to Dark Purple), is the synthesis of Kapoor’s diligence as an artist and ambition of being an alchemist of time and space. “I was making objects that were about doing, about ritual. It was that ‘doingness’, that almost religious doing, that I saw everywhere… It felt like a huge affirmation” (A. Kapoor, quoted in ‘Kapoor on Kapoor’, The Guardian, November 8, 2008).
“As a kid I had a fantasy that one could invent a paint that would literally paint out part of the world”
(A Kapoor quoted in A. Kapoor, M. du Sautoy and D. Leader (eds.), Turning the World Upside Down, exh. cat. Serpentine Gallery, London, 2011, p. 58).
Polished to luminous perfection, Anish Kapoor’s Mirror (Pale Tangerine to Dark Purple) alludes the viewer to the endless nature of visual possibilities. The iridescent tonal gradation from orange to purple from the upper to the lower edge compliments the upside-down image in the mirror, marking this work as an exemplary example of his signature sculptural practice of the reflective concave mirrors. Every detail is captured, reflected, and magnified in its lacquered surface, cast in a poetic transience of colors. For over 2,000 years, geometry remained flat but by utilizing the curvature, Kapoor provides the viewer with an alternative to our flat Euclidean impression of the Earth. Similarly, mirrors have also been used as lenses for understanding light in its long scientific heritage. In this case, Kapoor is the pioneer who has incorporated geometry with reflection and explored them as pieces of art for the first time.
The process of making these mirrored works is extremely meticulous and laborious as the concave surface automatically magnifies any imperfection. The metal surface has to be smoothed away until no evidence of the human hand is left. It is crucial to maintain this level of technical difficulty for Kapoor because it then becomes a device for him to achieve the ultimate ‘perfect object.’ For him, the concave mirror has a metaphysical side to it that transforms it from its physical object-hood to something beyond, creating moments when it reads as a void, as a black hole in the universe. In our encounter with interminable nothingness, all sense of self dissolves. Kapoor talked about how these works with pigment allow him to capture the infinite in a finite existence, serving as a passport to the cosmos that shows the black hole from the inside-out. Thus, the Mirror (Pale Tangerine to Dark Purple) lies in the epitome of Kapoor’s childhood fantasy.
Location plays an important part in Kapoor’s biography. He was born in India in 1954 and was educated at art schools in London during the late 70s. Although he was one of a generation of sculptors who achieved international prominence in the 1980s, he carved a distinctive path for himself, rebelling against the prevailing tradition of truth to materials in sculpture at the time. As concepts of identity, place, and history have been featured at the core of his art, these mirrored works of Kapoor appear to possess an astonishing ability of habituating their environments when being installed. They draw in their surroundings to become part of them, oftentimes looking as if they were made specifically for the locations. At close quarters Kapoor’s curved mirrors call for a viewer-friendly experience by inviting the viewer to move and to explore the ways an image could be viewed differently in relation to its space, just as how Baroque architects like Bernini and Borromini achieved the same effect by using parabolas and ellipses. Staring into its gleaming interior, the surface appears to fluctuate and ripple with every slight movement and alteration of light. In this case, Kapoor resists the traditional static viewing of artworks and prompts a more interactive one on the notion of mobility and theatricality.
By tackling the notion of the non-object, not only is Kapoor pushing himself to break the boundary of object-hood from an artistic perspective, he is also posing a philosophical question to the viewer. “‘Non-Object’ is a phrase I use to refer to many of these works. When I was making the pigment pieces, there were two fantasies about those objects: one is that they make themselves and the other is that they’re objects that are so ephemeral as to be not there, even though the color of them is so emphatic that they are very much there. And then the void objects were a literal attempt to make a hole in the space” (A. Kapoor quoted in A. Kapoor, M. du Sautoy and D. Leader (eds.), Turning the World Upside Down, exh. cat. Serpentine Gallery, London, 2011, p. 58).
This paradox reveals Kapoor’s desire to capture the intangible sensation of being tricked by a visual illusion, which can be seen as a type of contemporary sublime, sitting in dialogue with Romantic artists like Casper David Friedrich. Mirror (Pale Tangerine to Dark Purple), is the synthesis of Kapoor’s diligence as an artist and ambition of being an alchemist of time and space. “I was making objects that were about doing, about ritual. It was that ‘doingness’, that almost religious doing, that I saw everywhere… It felt like a huge affirmation” (A. Kapoor, quoted in ‘Kapoor on Kapoor’, The Guardian, November 8, 2008).