Monday, July 8, 2013

An internationally applauded sculptor’s unconventional universe

His versatility and inventiveness that encompasses a wide range of works from site-specific interventions on floor or wall and powdered pigment sculptures, to gigantic indoor and outdoor installations is what makes Anish Kapoor a truly versatile artist.

Deep-rooted metaphysical polarities

This internationally applauded sculptor has explored what he perceives as deep-rooted and diverse metaphysical polarities: being and non-being, presence and absence, and the solid and the intangible. His works often emphasize on perception and purity, enacted in three-dimensional space. They tend to carve, color and complicate space in many different ways, imparting interactive aspects and pushing that purity back & forth between votive and technological, East and West.

A decade or so older than most of the Young British Artists, who happened to take the art world by storm in the early 1990’s, his sensibility remains markedly different owing to an cross-cultural upbringing. The fact that he did not begin life in a Western culture has probably added a curious hybrid dimension to many of his projects.

A fulfilling art journey

Born in the city of Mumbai in 1954, he left India two decades later - originally to become an engineer like his father. He only took up art seriously after joining the Hornsey College of Art (1973-77) followed by graduation at Chelsea School of Art (1977-78). For a year or so, he taught at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, and was chosen as Artist in Residence at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in 1982.

In the last two and a half decades of his art career, he has established himself as an art practitioner with a unique persona, character and style. In particular, his usage of unusual methods and unconventional materials (like the brightly colored pigments he began using after a visit in the late 1970’s to India), juxtaposed with a very peculiar non-Western visual idiom, have helped him attain global fame, attention and status.

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