Aziz Art May 2016

Career
Anish Kapoor became known in the
1980s for his geometric or
biomorphic sculptures made using
simple materials such as granite,
limestone, marble, pigment, and
plaster.These early sculptures are
frequently simple, curved forms,
usually monochromatic and
brightly coloured, using powder
pigment to define and permeate
the form. "While making the
pigment pieces, it occurred to me
that they all form themselves out of
each other. So I decided to give
them a generic title,
A Thousand Names, implying
infinity, a thousand being a
symbolic number. The powder
works sat on the floor or projected
from the wall. The powder on the
floor defines the surface of the
floor and the objects appear to be
partially submerged, like icebergs.
That seems to fit inside the idea of
something being partially there."
Such use of pigment characterised
his first high-profile exhibit as part
of the New Sculpture exhibition at
the Hayward Gallery London in
1978.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, he
was acclaimed for his explorations
of matter and non-matter,
specifically evoking the void in both
free-standing sculptural works and
ambitious installations. Many of his
sculptures seem to recede into the
distance, disappear into the ground
or distort the space around them.
In 1987, he began working in stone.
His later stone works are made of
solid, quarried stone, many of
which have carved apertures and
cavities, often alluding to, and
playing with dualities (earth-sky,
matter-spirit, lightness-darkness,
visible-invisible, consciousunconscious,
male-female, and
body-mind). "In the end, I’m talking
about myself. And thinking about
making nothing, which I see as a
void. But then that’s something,
even though it really is nothing."
Since 1995, he has worked with the
highly reflective surface of polished
stainless steel. These works are
mirror-like, reflecting or distorting
the viewer and surroundings. Over
the course of the following decade
Kapoor's sculptures ventured into
more ambitious manipulations of
form and space. He produced a
number of large works, including
Taratantara (1999)