PIA WALTER got there before us, and she got there just in time. So, what's the verdict?
Prepare to feel miniscule, perplexed, and bedazzled! Anish Kapoor’s sculptures at the Royal Academy of the Arts invite you to join a world where space is relative, the colours dumbfounding, and sex is everywhere.
Kapoor is an internationally acclaimed artist and winner of the 1991 Turner Prize. This major solo exhibition, which runs until 11 December, surveys his career to date, showcasing a number of new and previously unseen works.
His pieces are often simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured. Tall Tree and the Eye, a major new sculpture on display in the Annenberg Courtyard, is a pristine example of this. By creating works which both distort and disorientate, the Bombay born artist intends to challenge our traditional notions of time and space, leaving the spectator to deal with an oddly appealing form of nausea.
Kapoor seems fascinated with sculptures actively participating in their own creation, as seen with Svayambh, meaning self-generated in Sanskrit. This rather macabre piece, which occupies five galleries, consists of a vast block of wax moving slowly along tracks and squeezing itself through the classical doorways of the Royal Academy, leaving behind a viscous red residue.
Svayambh, along with other works such as Shooting into the Corner, a cannon that fires red wax at 20 minute intervals, in a manner which reminds one of a sneeze, makes you wonder how his pieces are dismantled.
There is no doubt that Kapoors work swallows you for magical moments in which you stand in awe, oblivious to your immediate surroundings. This surreal exhibition is truly original and definitely worth visiting. Although a complaint can be found in its briefness, which seems rather disproportionate to the very real £8 (practically student price!) expected at the door.
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