Kapoorthala

Anish Kapoor, Delhi, Mumbai defies the straitjacket of nationality, the latitude resulting in works that tease cultural milieux

01 January 2011
‘Shooting into the Corner,’ the highlight of the Mumbai show, features repetitive firing of wax bullets from a cannon.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUBHASH SHARMA
‘Shooting into the Corner,’ the highlight of the Mumbai show, features repetitive firing of wax bullets from a cannon.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUBHASH SHARMA

ANISH KAPOOR SCRUNCHES HIS EYEBROWS and flinches at the sound of a supersized wax bullet that isn’t hurtling his way. It’s nice to know that the sound of an artwork—‘Shooting into the Corner, 2008-09’—completed two years ago, can still alarm Anish Kapoor. Suddenly, I don’t feel entirely silly at having felt out of sorts, every 20 minutes or thereabouts, which is when the red wax bullet is shot from a seriously smooth cannon.

Before its much-anticipated release here at the Mehboob Studio, Mumbai, the sounds of this resonant work debuted at London’s Royal Academy of Arts last year. Kapoor’s mid-career retrospective at the Academy gave him membership to a club so select, he is thus far peerless. Kapoor is the first living artist to have exhibited at the redoubtable venue. At 275,000 visitors, the exhibition worked up a footfall befitting of the blockbuster show it was always angled to be.

My first encounter with a Kapoor artwork was mediated via a two-dimensional reproduction of the subtly three-dimensional work ‘When I am Pregnant, 1992.’ The work had appeared on the jacket of International Galerie, 1998. At the time I was just about familiar with Kapoor’s name; but I remember still, the lightly sculptural work undercutting the pathologies of violence.

Gitanjali Dang Gitanjali Dang is an independent curator and critic based in Mumbai.

Keywords: london artist Anish Kapoor Gitanjali Dang Curator Royal Academy
COMMENT