Beschreibung:

33 PROPERTY OF AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION Anish Kapoor Untitled 2008 stainless steel 90 1/2 x 90 1/2 x 17 3/4 in. (230 x 230 x 45 cm)
Provenance Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York Exhibited New York, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Anish Kapoor May 12 – August 15, 2008 (another example exhibited) De Santa Clara, Murcia, Sharq Al-Andalus Hall Museum, November 2008 – January 2009 (another example exhibited) Literature J. Peyton-Jones, H. Ulrich Obrist, Anish Kapoor Turning the World Upside Down in Kensington Gardens, London, 2000, pp. 190-197 (another example illustrated) Catalogue Essay Anish Kapoor is one of the foremost sculptors of our time, as is eminently demonstrated in the present lot. His geometric and biomorphic designs, for which he first became known in the 1980s, are made using materials such as stainless steel, Cor-ten steel, iron, aluminum, wax, resin, fiberglass, limestone, marble, and many others. His use of media bespeaks his versatility and mastery of both elemental and complex materials. While his signature concave spheres and monolith slabs conform to the precepts of minimalism in their formal construction, Kapoor infuses his works with an intensely spiritual and psychological power, drawing viewers in with their smooth surfaces, optical effects, impossible depths, and sensuous colors. Throughout his career and through the manipulation of these various medias, Kapoor has created works that seem to, and sometimes actually do, retreat into the horizon, melt into the floor and disappear into the wall, destabilizing our every notion of physical reality. His works are both present and absent, solid and ethereal, infinite and illusive, true and false. “I wish to make sculpture about belief, or about passion, about experience that is outside of material concern.” (Kapoor in Lewis Biggs, Objects & Sculpture, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, 1981, p. 20). The present lot, Untitled, 2008, is a part of Kapoor’s series of works featuring mirrored surfaces. His well-known public installations have graced multiple cities around the world with their highly polished stainless steel shell that reflect the world in which they are situated. In 2006 Sky Mirror, a 35 foot diameter concave mirror was placed at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center. Standing nearly three stories tall, the breathtaking mirror shimmered with the inverted image of New York’s iconic skyline. The concave surface faced 30 Rockefeller Plaza, reflecting an upside-down image of the historical skyscraper, and the convex side faced the bustling crowds and passing taxi cabs of Fifth Avenue. There, Kapoor’s mission went further than turning the world upside down — he reassembled it in a new image comprised of the shapes and shards of the earth and the sky. Sky Mirror, 2006, is an example of what Kapoor describes as a “non-object,” a sculpture that, despite its monumentality, creates a window or void that reinvents its surroundings. New York again became a beneficiary of Kapoor’s work when one of his mirrored sculptures was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008; Untitled, 2007 is the sister sculpture to the present lot, having been created a year earlier, and greets the viewers at the entrance to the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing. Anish Kapoor’s Untitled, 2008, drastically challenges standards of visual perception with its reflective skin comprised of thousands of octagonal and square mirrors. The mercurial surface demonstrates a powerful ability to mesmerize and in its visual gravity cannot fail to draw the viewer close. Transfixed by an elusive image that manifests itself across all of its honeycombed facets, the reflected image is fragmented across the surface until one moves closer, upon which the tiny images coalesce into a single impressionistic portrait. The slightest shift in position alters the image dramatically, changing the reflections captured in the concave sculpture. The enormous disk reflects light from every direction, producing thousands of miniature images on its surface. A warped reflection sta