Kapoorthala

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.

And another red one shoots off into the white corner. Splotch! This time Kapoor doesn’t resort to duck ‘n’ scrunch, choosing instead to apologise. “Sorry about that,” he smiles.

Discussing an impression she had picked up following her arrival in Mumbai, Andrea Rose, co-curator, Anish Kapoor, Delhi, Mumbai, says, “Earlier today, someone spoke of how they thought the work referenced the November 2008 terrorist attacks on the city.”

With ‘Shooting into the Corner’ the splatter gun effect touches on metaphors as wide-ranging as violence; extended sculpture, painting and abstraction; evasion and—allow me to be puerile here—even that preferred sport of several men, the one that has them pointing and shooting into

the corners of this great city of ours, as though it is a ginormous urinal.

Why of all the places the city could’ve doled out did Kapoor choose—as inspired a choice as it is—Mehboob Studios, a churning site of quintessential Bollywood? “Studios belong to Bombay; Bollywood belongs to Bombay. I’m really interested in the idea that art can go wider, can go further beyond the art world. And why not? We have here, an audience as sophisticated or unsophisticated as anyplace else,” Kapoor asserts.

Although Kapoor doesn’t share an idiom with the excesses of Bollywood, his spare show at the cavernous studio space comes together because of the sheer will of the work. The site, which looks freshly gutted, becomes befitting of an artist who has, in his nearly four decade long practice, been the epitome of spare.

On my way to the opening, the rickshaw driver ferrying me across to the venue inquired if there was big gig on at Mehboob Studio. I explained as best I could that an artist called Anish Kapoor was exhibiting his works there. I had only just mentioned the name, when he caught my attention via the rear-view mirror and inquired, “Whose son is he?”

It was a few seconds before I got routed to the road from which Speedy Gonzales was approaching the matter. Out here in Bollywood land, if you’re a Kapoor then you oug-hta be someone’s son.

Born in the Bombay of 1954, this Kapoor is the son of a Jewish mother and a Punjabi hydrographer father. In 1971, he moved to Israel where he studied electrical engineering. Then in 1973 he moved once again, this time to London, by which time art was most definitely after his heart.

For all intents and purposes—from the invite to the hoardings—the title of the show reads, Anish Kapoor, Delhi, Mumbai; the names of the two cities are in Devanagari. While introducing and discussing the exhibition Kapoor preferred to align with Mumbai. Be that as it may, on the evening of this encounter Kapoor prefers to not slip into the straitjacket of nationality, this latitude resulting in works that tease cultural milieux.

A case in point would be the startling colour of his pigment series, 1978-83, with powdered pigment covering the works and the floor around.  Sure, the colours are reminiscent of a certain Indian aesthetic, but look closer: they disguise the solidity of Euclidean forms. They are solid forms confused by the surface. The subject is sculpture, albeit via Indian culture.

From confusion of surface to the tautness of surface. In the void series—the word itself first appeared in 1989, in a work titled ‘Void’—the scooped-out centres of first fibreglass and then metal create illusory vortexes. From afar they appear like pools of colour, inviting you to dip your hand in. In 1991, not long after the voids had arrived, Kapoor won himself the Turner Prize, Britain’s prestigious annual art award.

Kapoor is an erudite artist, no doubt. Formal wizardry and philosophical games have long since made a conjoined appearance in his oeuvre. But he does best when he leaves out the quasi-philosophical/theoretical jargon. His idea of the ‘proto-object’—an object that precedes language and preconditioning—is a case in point. Any such object would be impossible, as it would in fact fall within the ambit of natural language and not precede it.

In keeping the works open he enables them to elude any one meaning. The void works, for instance, are conceptually busy because they are reminiscent of engineering, astronomy, Buddhist and Japanese philosophies, computer programming and even accounting.

Alas, the Mumbai leg of the exhibition does not have representatives from either the void or the pigment series, though Delhi does. As a result, we don’t get to see the gradual narrowing of the palette. From the red, blue, yellow and white of his pigment and void sequences, to just the red—as found in the ambitious PVC and wax works—which unfailingly recalls the body.

Explaining his methodology Kapoor says, “Since Delhi has some of that retrospect quality, it didn’t feel necessary to repeat the same at Mehboob. All the works here, I think, have been made in the last five to six years or so. In the wax and mirrored works I was keen on exhibiting the two polar opposites of my work.”

Between the two sites one gets a wholesome view of Kapoor’s oeuvre. The only missing bit is the sampling of a PVC work. Thus far, the works have entailed the holding up of unheard of amounts of stretchy PVC in physics-defying ways with the help of metal braces, rings and other such things. The PVC chapter climaxed with Marsyas, 2002-03, the crowd puller at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. At 3,400 square feet, the Turbine Hall is a notoriously difficult space, but Kapoor took it over end to end.

In addition to the polarity Kapoor speaks of, it is possible to discern another axis of polarities. Most exhibitions are built around the space-object paradigm, and Kapoor too has toed this line. But in the recent past Kapoor has successfully brought in elements of the time-event paradigm. So now we’re looking at a space-object-time-event intersection. Out here in Mumbai with the exception of ‘Shooting into the Corner,’ all other works are objects anchored in space, in that they don’t have a periodic performance timetable.

‘Svayambhu(v), 2007’—first exhibited at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, and then again at the retrospective two years ago—amplifies the space-object-time-event intersection a few notches more than ‘Shooting into the Corner.’ In it, a red wax behemoth takes its time to wind through the rooms of the given space mucking up the doorframes it encounters.

We live in a mucky city where guns, horns, bombs, tempers and everything else that can go off, goes off. And, yet, nothing startles. For the third time the cannon has gone off. By now I should’ve gotten used to the shot into the corner. But I catch my reflection do a hiccup in the ‘S-Curve, 2006.’

When I stand up-close to the S-Curve my reflection appears no different from the one I see of myself in an ordinary full-length mirror. But I gain girth as I step away. Finally now that I’ve moved beyond a certain point, my reflection has flipped over and is doing the sort of headstand I’m more or less incapable of doing. Showing solidarity with the S-Curve at Mehboob are ‘Non-Object (Plane), 2010,’ ‘Non-Object (Door), 2008,’ ‘Non-Object (Pole), 2008’ and ‘Non-Object (Spire), 2008.’ These shiny, happy pieces—each work is titled after the form it’s given—which recall funhouse mirrors, are made from highly polished stainless steel and are more modest iterations of bigger and shinier works like ‘Cloud Gate (aka ‘The Bean’), 2006,’ and ‘Sky Mirror, 2001.’

The Serpentine Gallery is currently hosting a show, Turning the World Upside Down, of four such mirror-like Kapoor pieces at Kensington Gardens in London. To realise what we have lost out on, one has to imagine the impact these works have when not just a person but nature preens in front of them.

You can’t touch but you can certainly make a picture of yourself peering into Kapoor’s looking glasses. Ah, yes, but they’re not allowing pictures at the exhibition. And that, I’m afraid, is plain silly. What are they worried about? All previous tests have confirmed that stainless steel and wax do not wither when exposed to the camera or its flash. But the Aura might wither; aha, so there’s your catch. Of course, we must solemnly guard the Aura under all circumstances.

Cameras, more importantly cellphone cameras, complete these works. It’s like an epic clash between two spectaculars. The works need them. Cameras bring them closure, so to speak.

Also, it would’ve been nice to have one of the mirrored works outdoors, which is where their personality best emerges. I reckon, however, that thought has gone into this decision; after all, the show has been a near-decade in the making. So, it would be best not to carp I suppose. There have been whispers, ahem, about a possible public art commission in India. Kapoor does confirm them: “Sonia Gandhi seemed to say something about a work in the Indian public place in her introductory address.” Yep, that’s right. Mrs Gandhi inaugurated the Delhi exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA). The politics of aesthetics? Rancière, mon amour!

A fourth wax bullet. A loud-ish thud followed by a quick plonk, as the bullet heaps onto the unruly pile of red wax below.

Anish Kapoor, Delhi, Mumbai

-At Mehboob Studio, Mumbai. Daily, from 9 am to 9 pm, until 16 January.

-At the National Gallery of Modern Art, Jaipur House,New Delhi. Tuesday to Sunday, from 10am to 5pm, until 27 February Clsosed on Mondays and National Holidays.