Curator’s Notes
Anish Kapoor is one of the most influential and prolific artists working today. Perhaps most famous for his public sculptures and site-specific installations that are both adventures in form and feats of engineering, Kapoor maneuvers between vastly different scales, across numerous series of works, experimenting with an astounding variety of materials. In our exhibition are two examples of his concave stainless steel mirror works, which he has been developing since the mid 90’s. These are not sculptures in the traditional sense that one moves around them, viewing them from 360 degrees. Rather they are objects that appear to float off of the wall with vibrant reference to the history of abstract painting. While the concave mirror has historically been employed for scientific purposes for centuries, Kapoor wields the form as a phenomenological inquiry into the parameters of vision and the paradoxes of representation. The viewer, from a distance, first deciphers the color at the center of the disc and a vague reflection of its surroundings. Upon approaching, one's own reflection becomes visible, but only in an abstracted form. The shape of the disc magnifies the scale of the reflected image and also inverts it, turning the world upside down. With both works, “Oriental Blue to Clear” of 2023 and “Magenta to Clear” of 2024, the solid colors at the centers of the discs dissipate out to the edges, which reveal the pure stainless steel. This further dematerializes their presence, as even the color appears transient and insubstantial. Kapoor has stated: “For me, the illusory is more poetically truthful than the ‘real’.”

Artist Bio
Anish Kapoor is considered one of the most influential artists working today. Renowned for public sculptures that are both adventures in form and feats of engineering, Kapoor manoeuvres between vastly different scales, across numerous bodies 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. 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 started in the early 2000s – 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 and Venice, Italy. He studied at Hornsey College of Art, London (1973–77) followed by postgraduate studies at Chelsea School of Art, London (1977–78). Recent solo exhibitions include Cidade Matarazzo, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); Liverpool Cathedral, UK (2024); ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishøj, Denmark (2024); Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy (2023-24); 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 (2019); Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum and Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing (2019); CorpArtes, Santiago (2019); Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery, London (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 (2017); MAST Foundation, Bologna, Italy (2017); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City (2016); Couvent de la Tourette, Eveux, France (2015); Château de Versailles, Versailles, France (2015) and The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow (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 and won the Turner Prize in 1991. Large scale public projects include Cloud Gate (2004) in Millennium Park, Chicago, USA; Dismemberment Site I (2003–2009) Kaipara Bay, New Zealand and Ark Nova (2013) the world’s first inflatable concert hall in Japan. Anish Kapoor was awarded a CBE in 2003 and a Knighthood in 2013 for services to visual arts.