This elegant, lavishly illustrated hardback monograph with no dust jacket, exactly as issued, is, exceptionally, hand signed and inscribed to Nadine on the title page by Anish Kapoor.
Makes a terrific gift!
Book information:
Publisher: University of California Press; (September 1, 1998)
English; Hardcover; 120 pages with color illustrations
Publisher's blurb:
Anish Kapoor is one of a generation of internationally acclaimed British artists who came to prominence in the 1980s. He has since developed a distinctive body of work in stone, marble, pigment, stainless steel, and plaster, producing sculptures that can provoke intensely spiritual and physical feelings.
This catalog accompanies Kapoor's first major showing in a public gallery in Britain. New pieces created especially for the Hayward Gallery transform the London gallery space, penetrating the walls and floors and giving the impression that the work is growing out of the architecture. Included in the show are a series of monumental stone sculptures weighing up to eight tons each.
Much of Kapoor's recent work explores the concept of the "void." The artist cuts deeply into the stone, sometimes coating the interior surfaces with a rich pigment and transforming the void into a charged, dark space. Kapoor also works with reflective surfaces that appear to engulf the viewer and his surroundings.
Homi Bhabha's essay asks what kind of theory of art and culture emerges from Kapoor's work. Bhabha offers an "ethical" interpretation that explores the way the sculptures force one to ponder not just art, but the role of art in the world. He also comments on how playful Kapoor's work is in its use of color, object, and fantasy, and on how the combination of "deadly seriousness" and play are essential in his sculptures.
"I am really interested in the end, at the end of the process, at the way a stone is not a stone, the way the stone becomes something else, becomes light, becomes a proposition, becomes a lens."—Anish Kapoor
More about Anish Kapoor:
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, Kapoor 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. There are resonances with mythologies of the ancient world – Indian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman – and with modern times.
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 solo exhibitions include Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia and Palazzo Manfrin, Venice, Italy (2022); Modern Art Oxford, UK (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning, Shenzhen, China (2021); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK (2020); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2020); ‘Surge’ at Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2019); Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum and Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing, China (2019); CorpArtes, Santiago, Chile (2019); Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery, London, UK (2019); Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal (2018); ‘Descension’’ at Public Art Fund, Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 1, New York, NY, USA (2017); Parque de la Memoria, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2017); MAST Foundation, Bologna, Italy (2017); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico (2016); Couvent de la Tourette, Eveux, France (2015); Château de Versailles, 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 Orbit (2012) in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, UK and Ark Nova (2013) the world's first inflatable concert hall in Japan.
Courtesy of Lisson Gallery
