Something different, just like a holiday! This logette is the first in a series on artists, who I admire in thought/word/deed (art), composed of 2 paragraphs - in their own words - and 2 of their works. Et voici: Anish Kapoor.
"An artist’s job is to go into the studio and say ‘I don’t know what to do, I’m lost.’ That it’s the impossibility, if you like, of any poetic substance. And then you go in there and in spite of that terrible feeling, which you have to live with, you do something and you think ah, maybe that can lead to its own content, not something already there...And I’m really interested in that as a process. Because it’s a process that leads you in directions you couldn’t imagine, directions you couldn’t rationally put there."
Installation view: Anish Kapoor Lisson Gallery 25 March - 9 May 2015 Courtesy the artist + Lisson Gallery
"I think I've had three or four moments in my work over the last twenty-five years that have been real discoveries. The pigment pieces felt to me as if they were a discovery about an object and what an object can be; how an object can be and not be. Then, of course, the void pieces. The idea that if I empty out all the content and just make something that is an empty form, I don't empty out the content at all. The content is there in a way that's more surprising than if I tried to make a content. So, therefore, the idea that subject matter is somehow not the same as content. Then, in a different sort of way, moving from matte surfaces to shiny surfaces. In terms of the fact that the traditional sublime is the matte surface, deep and absorbing, and that the shiny might be a modern sublime, which is fully reflective, absolutely present, and returns the gaze. This feels like a new way to think about the non-objective object."
Installation view: Anish Kapoor Lisson Gallery 25 March - 9 May 2015 Courtesy the artist + Lisson Gallery
para 1: via Phaidon 2015/ Anish Kapoor An artist's job is to say I'm lost
para 2: via Tate Magazine 2007/ In conversation with Heidi Reitmaier
next exhibition: Lisson Gallery, London 14 September - 30 October 2021
Anish Kapoor: website
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