Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new drawings by Anish Kapoor. This exhibition will present a selection of medium and large size drawings that further Kapoor's exploration of the void. Kapoor's shift in emphasis from the outer to the inner brought about a change in focus from the exterior form of the object to their dematerialized interior and resulted in his voids. The metaphoric power of these deep, pigmented, and impenetrable inner realms visually and viscerally draw the viewer into the work allowing an experience that is personal, contemplative, and spiritual.
Anish Kapoor's work brings together the formal concerns of post-minimalism with an eastern spiritual sensibility and explores the relationship between physicality and transcendence. Each drawing is typically begun near the center of the paper and develops spontaneously. The drawings are direct expressions that stress the primacy of the mark and the hand of the artist. There is a raw, gestural, and visceral character on one hand and a sublime refinement and control on the other. Within these works there is a coexistence of opposites: a simultaneous play of glutinous and dry surface, negative and positive space, lightness and darkness, shadow and void, presence and absence, stasis and potential activity. This duality creates a tension between formalist structures and an engagement with deep metaphysical elements of philosophy. Space remains undefined as forms swirl and light alludes to the spaces beyond. The vivid and saturated colors illustrate Kapoor's understanding that color has the ability to transform feelings and provoke emotions while being a physical presence unto itself. These drawings represent a more private and personal side of his practice. Symbolism and modernist abstraction coalesce and illustrate a movement beyond the decorative into the sublime.
"The issue is thus ultimately about finding an appropriate relation between void and form, or between the void and the material expression. This central issue has gone hand in hand with the creative endeavours of artists ever since the Renaissance, becoming acute under Modernism as the mimetic was expunged from pictures, especially from those of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. This is particularly the case inasmuch as Barnett Newman not merely aspired to abstraction but…created forms which, by their abstract nature, contain an abstract intellectual content…this pithy and pointed formulation brings us directly to the work of Anish Kapoor. Interestingly, he sees himself as both sculptor and painter, and thus must address himself in his works with a redoubled precision to the questions of material, colour and spatial qualities, without which the sought-after void could not exist in space of time. Yet above all, Anish Kapoor is concerned with that certain something, elusive of definition, which we shall tentatively designate the invisible in the visible."
(Eckhard Schneider. "Anish Kapoor – My Red Homeland" in Anish Kapoor – My Red Homeland, published by Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2003, pp. 16-17)
Anish Kapoor's work has been the subject of exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States. Recent solo exhibitions include Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; CAPC Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux; Hayward Gallery, London; Schirin Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Haus der Kunst, Munch, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and currently the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C. In 1990 Kapoor was awarded the Premio Duemila for representing Great Britain at the Venice Biennale and received the Turner Prize in 1991.
For further information please contact Jennifer Loh, Stacy Bengtson, or Heather Harmon at (310) 276-5424.
