Contemporary art is inherently difficult to define, in fact and in many ways it’s indefinable. Even some of our most honorable historians are finding it particularly tough to historicize. It is more easily understood through a look by looking at its innovative artists. That said This is noticeably a time of freedom, art has now left behind the traditional and exploded into an era of limitlessness. This transformation however, has seen the art world divided into two groups; those who embrace art without the laws of the traditional, that once dominated the scene; and those who truly believe art just isn’t art without it.
Nevertheless revolutionary artists like Anish Kapoor humble the art world, breaking down the division and providing an honest and pure appreciation of the fundamentals of visual art; the awe-inspiring nature of the visual. Kapoor is both acknowledged and extensively celebrated by both divisions of the art world.
Kapoor was born in Mumbai and grew up in a small town surrounded by giant landscapes at the base of the Himalayas. Even though he has studied art he doesn’t speak of it as a life he sought out, it was more like something he simply found himself involved in. His success is not only founded on for the reason that his well-executed works offering a true uniqueness; he is admired for his insight into our inherent appreciation of the visual. He explores how worlds of singular colour, fragmented reflections of our environments and warped senses of spatial awareness are intrinsically linked with our curiosity and enjoyment of the visual world.
The MCA(Museum of Contemporary Art) recently dedicated its space to Kapoors giant structures. The exhibition, though epic in scale, was indeed humbleding of the art world. His ideas are simple; Kapoor tries to find the best method and materials needed to reconnect an audience with their appreciation of visual amazements. He accomplishes each work with the assistance of a vast team of builders, sculptors, painters and ship builders.
Kapoor has never really considered himself an “artist”. He believes it is not about what he has to say at all. In fact he infers “the job I have to do as an artist in one way or another is to get myself out of the way so that the real work can happen”. There is no gesture in his work at all. Although obviously ‘man made and constructed with mathematically technical precision, Kapoor’s structures seem profoundly organic as if they are meant to be there; a part of the natural environment. Much like hundred year-old trees or the giant mountains of the Himalayas. Kapoor’s structures recreate a feeling of captivating serenity often inspired by nature’s wonders.
His largest work in the exhibition is Memory (2008). It is constructed with Cor-ten Steel, weighing in at a whopping 24 tons and occupying the entire area of one of the MCA’s large-scale galleries. “Resembling a structure somewhere between a submarine and a rocket, Memory is a work fitting somewhere between fiction and reality” The Exhibition is about interaction and experience, each work is like a dream or a mystical journey and yet strikingly familiar within our visceral. Some of his more spatially intriguing pieces such as Void (1989) or My Body Your Body (1993) seem to disappear through the wall into or existing in another dimension. Kapoor creates curious illusions and generously and bestows us with dreamy moments of blue or red.
This exhibition embodies the humanistic need to interact with colour and space, paint and mud, soft and shinny. He titillates our curiosity with the power of colour and texture, space and dimensions. It is this truthful exploration into such simple human behavior that has humbled the art world on a global scale and reminded us all of how the visual excites. The MCA exhibition has been a huge success within the art world. And this statute has been matched or even overtaken by his mass popularity with the general public. The success of Kapoor and this exhibition lies within the intrinsic accessibility of everyman with the interplay of human curiosity and grounding visual experiences. One could only give this exhibition ten out of ten. It is truly a wow event.
