Anish Kapoor Exhibiting at Royal Academy of Arts

Svayambh, Tall Tree and the Eye, Shooting into the Corner on Display

Oct 4, 2009

Anish Kapoor, regarded as one of the most important and innovative sculptors of the 21st Century, is the subject of an outstanding exhibition at London's Royal Academy.

The Royal Academy of Art's latest exhibition, Anish Kapoor, seems to be London's most talked about show. The display has barely been open a few days and is already attracting record crowds. The show includes many well-known pieces including 1000 Names (1979-80), White sand, Red millet, Many flowers (1982), When I am pregnant (1992), and Yellow (1999), together with several new and previously unseen sculptures.

The display, wich has been jointly set up by the Gladstone Gallery, New York, the Lisson Gallery, London, and the Anish Kapoor Studio in partnership with the Royal Academy, is sponsored by Bernard and Victoria Sharp and The Henry Moore Foundation.

The first thing visitors see when approaching the Academy across the Annenberg Courtyard is Kapoor's magnificent steel sculpture entitled: Tall tree and the eye. The structure stands fifteen metres tall, as high as the surrounding buildings. Consisting of 76 highly polished balls that appear to bubble upwards weightlessly, the mirror-like spheres create a constantly changing vista reflecting activities in the courtyard.

More of Kapoor's outdoor sculptures including Cloud Gate located in Millennium Park, Chicago, and the Sky Mirrors of Nottingham Playhouse, Nottingham, UK, and the Rockefeller Centre, New York are discussed further in another article entitled Anish Kapoor at Royal Academy of Arts – Preview

Once inside the Academy's galleries visitors, including small children and adults of every age, are enjoying Kapoor's incredible sculptures. A huge wax train trundles along the entire length of the Royal Academy, and a cannon fires projectiles of ruby-red wax. A hall of mirrors reflects the world in a thousand different ways and a room of worm-like cement sculptures provides some very interesting reactions from visitors.

Hall of Mirrors

One gallery is devoted entirely to highly polished mirrors of varying shapes and sizes. Children, in particular, will enjoy this display where their own actions are reflected either upside down, in reverse, as tall, wafer-thin stick people, or as short, fat grotesquely deformed figures.

In another gallery the brilliance of the mirrors is replaced by the dullness of cement. A room full of worm-like structures, of various heights and sizes, is entitled Grayman Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, Beauty Evoked. This photograph shows just one of the many cement structures.

Moving through the Academy's Central Hall visitors are confronted by a huge sculpture, created specially for the Royal Academy, constructed of Corten Steel entitled Hive (2009). The sculpture is squeezed into a small area creating a somewhat bizarre experience.

This is a sculpture that will create itself as the exhibition progresses. Projectiles of red wax are periodically fired across the gallery by a cannon. The exploding wax splatters on walls and ceiling and the sculpture grows a little on each firing. As visitors wait for the firing the tension is almost tangible. The silence is broken by the loud thud of wax hitting the opposite wall and the audience cheers and applauds. The RA will certainly have a huge clean-up operation at the end of this exhibition.

Svayambh is a Sanskrit word which translates as "auto-generated", and like Shooting into the Corner, this is another sculpture that is creating itself. Svayambh takes the form of a train track, covered with ruby-red wax. The track runs the entire length of several adjoining galleries. A 30-tonne red wax engine traverses the track at a snail's pace, squeezing itself through doorways, forming its own shape.

To coincide with the exhibition a fully illustrated catalogue has been published by the Royal Academy of Arts. Kapoor's entire career is surveyed and assessed by leading art historians and critics.

Anish Kapoor will remain open until 11th December 2009. Full details of the exhibition, associated events and publications can be obtained from the Royal Academy of Arts.

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