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Lot Essay
‘We live in a fractured world. I’ve always seen it as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness.’ – Anish Kapoor
‘It’s the way in which the stone is not stone, the way the stone becomes something else, becomes light, becomes a proposition, becomes a lens...’ – Anish Kapoor
‘There is a history in the stone and through this simple device of excavating the stone it’s just as if a whole narrative sequence is suddenly there.’ – Anish Kapoor
Untitled, 2010, beautifully exemplifies the dualities that have become so synonymous with Anish Kapoor’s art practice: presence and absence, solidity and intangibility, and the terrestrial and the celestial. Using an oversized block of translucent, milky alabaster, Kapoor has manipulated the stone to articulate its inherently variable materiality. In the artists own words, the embodiment of a material essence is a paramount concern, as ‘works of art, or let’s say things in the world, not just works of art, can be truly made. If they are truly made, in the sense of possessing themselves, then they are beautiful’ (A. Kapoor in conversation with H. Bhabba, 1998, reproduced in Anish Kapoor, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1998, p. 33). Standing over a metre in height, Untitled roughly hewn exterior is as otherworldly as a lunar crater, while the interior’s smooth, luminous white seemingly dissolves into a void. Untitled is forever in the process of transforming, a reconciliation of two states of being, the expression of coherence. For Kapoor, acknowledgment of spirituality is essential to his working process, embodied in his art through transfiguration, which evokes a sense of sublime awe. By carving a circular aperture into the stone, Kapoor finds atmosphere in earth’s physicality, and inserts light and shadow in the alabaster’s core: ‘the passage from emptiness to fullness must be physicalized in the material’ (G. Celant, ‘Artist as Sacerdos’, Anish Kapoor, Milan, 1998, p. XXVII). Untitled functions as a portal between two realms, a joining of the physical with the temporal, an encapsulation of the transitory and ephemeral. Kapoor explains that the idea is ‘to make an object which is not an object, to make a hole in the space, to make something which actually does not exist’ (A. Kapoor quoted in X. Lewallen, ‘Anish Kapoor’, View, vol. VII, no. 4, San Francisco, 1991). But this process of becoming, too, is essential, and each sculpture exists as the delicate remains of a journey. In Untitled, Kapoor endeavours to immobilize and crystallize a liminal experience – the act of being. Untitled’s mesmerizing form also reveals Kapoor’s preoccupation with the theme of the Origin. The enclosed space is suggestive of a womb, imbuing the work with a sense of renewal and maternity. The void can be understood as a site of cosmic creation, an expansion of energy encapsulated in the alabaster, enlivened and generative. ‘The void is not silent,’ Kapoor has said, ‘I have always thought of it more and more as a transitional space, an in-between space. It’s very much to do with time. I have always been interested as an artist in how one can somehow look again for that very first moment of creativity where everything is possible and nothing has actually happened. It’ a space of becoming...something’ that dwells in the presence of the work... that allows it or forces it not to be what it states it is in the first instance’ (A. Kapoor in conversation with H. Bhabba, 1998, reproduced in Anish Kapoor, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1998, pp. 35-36). Untitled is open to limitless possibility, an extension of the infinite.
‘I have always been interested as an artist in how one can somehow look again for that very first moment of creativity where everything is possible and nothing has actually happened. It’s a space of becoming...’ – Anish Kapoor
‘It’s the way in which the stone is not stone, the way the stone becomes something else, becomes light, becomes a proposition, becomes a lens...’ – Anish Kapoor
‘There is a history in the stone and through this simple device of excavating the stone it’s just as if a whole narrative sequence is suddenly there.’ – Anish Kapoor
Untitled, 2010, beautifully exemplifies the dualities that have become so synonymous with Anish Kapoor’s art practice: presence and absence, solidity and intangibility, and the terrestrial and the celestial. Using an oversized block of translucent, milky alabaster, Kapoor has manipulated the stone to articulate its inherently variable materiality. In the artists own words, the embodiment of a material essence is a paramount concern, as ‘works of art, or let’s say things in the world, not just works of art, can be truly made. If they are truly made, in the sense of possessing themselves, then they are beautiful’ (A. Kapoor in conversation with H. Bhabba, 1998, reproduced in Anish Kapoor, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1998, p. 33). Standing over a metre in height, Untitled roughly hewn exterior is as otherworldly as a lunar crater, while the interior’s smooth, luminous white seemingly dissolves into a void. Untitled is forever in the process of transforming, a reconciliation of two states of being, the expression of coherence. For Kapoor, acknowledgment of spirituality is essential to his working process, embodied in his art through transfiguration, which evokes a sense of sublime awe. By carving a circular aperture into the stone, Kapoor finds atmosphere in earth’s physicality, and inserts light and shadow in the alabaster’s core: ‘the passage from emptiness to fullness must be physicalized in the material’ (G. Celant, ‘Artist as Sacerdos’, Anish Kapoor, Milan, 1998, p. XXVII). Untitled functions as a portal between two realms, a joining of the physical with the temporal, an encapsulation of the transitory and ephemeral. Kapoor explains that the idea is ‘to make an object which is not an object, to make a hole in the space, to make something which actually does not exist’ (A. Kapoor quoted in X. Lewallen, ‘Anish Kapoor’, View, vol. VII, no. 4, San Francisco, 1991). But this process of becoming, too, is essential, and each sculpture exists as the delicate remains of a journey. In Untitled, Kapoor endeavours to immobilize and crystallize a liminal experience – the act of being. Untitled’s mesmerizing form also reveals Kapoor’s preoccupation with the theme of the Origin. The enclosed space is suggestive of a womb, imbuing the work with a sense of renewal and maternity. The void can be understood as a site of cosmic creation, an expansion of energy encapsulated in the alabaster, enlivened and generative. ‘The void is not silent,’ Kapoor has said, ‘I have always thought of it more and more as a transitional space, an in-between space. It’s very much to do with time. I have always been interested as an artist in how one can somehow look again for that very first moment of creativity where everything is possible and nothing has actually happened. It’ a space of becoming...something’ that dwells in the presence of the work... that allows it or forces it not to be what it states it is in the first instance’ (A. Kapoor in conversation with H. Bhabba, 1998, reproduced in Anish Kapoor, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 1998, pp. 35-36). Untitled is open to limitless possibility, an extension of the infinite.
‘I have always been interested as an artist in how one can somehow look again for that very first moment of creativity where everything is possible and nothing has actually happened. It’s a space of becoming...’ – Anish Kapoor