Famous sculptor Anish Kapoor, master of the void

Anish Kapoor is a sculptor specializing in conceptual art. He is one of the most renowned and acclaimed artists living today.

His sculpture has been dominating the contemporary art world for the past three decades.

The 67-year-old artist doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. “Being an artist is a very long game. It is not a 10-year game. I hope I’ll be around making art when I’m 80”, said Anish Kapoor in an interview.

7 facts you should know about Anish Kapoor, one of the most influential sculptors of his generation:

1. For his services to visual arts, Anish Kapoor has received a knighthood.
2. Three of his works, Orbit, Temenos and Marsyas, are included in the 2015 issue of the British passport as background design alongside other British icons like the London Underground or Shakespeare’s Globe.
3. He is the recipient of the 2016 LennonOno Grant for Peace, a grant in the amount of $50,000 presented by Ono in honor of her late husband, John Lennon.
4. He designed the statuette for the 2018 Brit Awards.
5. Anish was awarded the $1 million Genesis Prize also known as the Jewish Nobel, which recognizes Jewish people who have achieved significant professional success, in recognition of their contributions to humanity. He donated the money to refugees.
6. He was the first living British artist to be granted a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.
7. He owns exclusive rights to Vantablack, the blackest black color, for artistic use.

Anish Kapoor’s stainless steel mirror sculptures make you feel like you’re a character in Inception, the movie

Remember the legendary scene from the movie Inception where Paris folds in on itself?

The physics-bending effects are visually striking but we take comfort in knowing it’s just the character’s dream.

When looking at Anish Kapoor’s mirror sculptures you experience the same the-world-is-upside-down feeling (physically and metaphorically) with a pinch of dizzying confusion when you realize you’re not in a dream.

Talking about his mirror sculptures in an interview, Anish Kapoor said the following:

“The real purpose is the question of the status of the object itself and its relationship to the viewer. The object can induce the sense of another time, another place.”

The most famous mirror sculpture by Anish Kapoor is Cloud Gate in Chicago, also known locally as “The Bean”.

The elliptical sculpture is one of the world’s largest permanent outdoor art installations, reflecting Chicago’s famous skyline and the clouds above.

The bean has a wooden structure inside and highly polished stainless steel plates forged seamlessly. The sculpture is washed and polished two or three times a day.

Anish Kapoor’s void – Hello darkness, my old friend

Anish Kapoor is an artist of the extremes.

On one hand, he creates sculptures that reflect light, on the other hand, he conjures the void with installations that absorb all light.

His obsession with the void began in the early 1990s with Descent into Limbo.

The installation is a concrete cube built by the sculptor. The visitor enters the cube and finds a black hole on the room’s floor. The hole is so intensely dark, you can’t tell what’s inside. It’s almost an illusion.

Natives of the digital world would say it’s a photoshopped image, the hole is not real.

That’s what a sixty year old man believed in the 2018 exhibition of the installation when he stepped and fell into the painted 2.5 metre hole. He was hospitalized but fortunately he didn’t suffer any severe injury.

How does Anish Kapoor create this optical illusion? By painting the hole’s walls with Vantablack, the blackest black colour which was created in 2014 by a tech company.

Vantablack is the substance which absorbs an impressive 99.96% of light. And Kapoor has the exclusive rights to the sprayable Vantablack paint. No other artist can use Vantablack which sparked outrage among artists at the time.

Kapoor’s definition of the void is different from what you or me might think. Instead of defining the void as the absence of space, Anish Kapoor argues it’s a space full of darkness.