Monday, May 28, 2012

Gigantic pieces from a world-renowned sculpture

Assistants frantically raced to build a 26- foot-high stainless steel orb in nick of time for the opening ceremony. The creator of the gigantic piece, Anish Kapoor is securedly balanced on a Le Corbusier chair in waiting room of gallery, looking rather detached and calm. Dressed in a black crew neck, Yohji Yamamoto sneakers and black pants, he sips a glass of water bit by bit and convincingly smiled.

Anish Kapoor has filled the internationally famous Barbara Gladstone Galleries with close to two dozen giant mounds made from countless pieces of concrete, carefully dribbled out of a machine in a process he describes as scatological.

The artist found all different kinds of ways to think of proto objects - first pure objects - over the years. One of them was a machine, which made objects not requiring him at all - a high tech machine. You have to put in cement and run a program, for it to do its own thing. It will just keep going, making certain types of objects – archaic and very primitive. The pieces were childlike, albeit they happened to be high technology.

Anish Kapoor had about 25 people in his studio. They were all working at the same time on different things. According to him, sculpture is quite a long process, as it takes several months to make anything. Certain pieces took almost two years to shape up and finish. The artist doesn’t feel there is anything like perfect scale for sculpture.

In fact, so much depends on the space you are in, and he believes every idea has its own scale, and one cannot have the same idea both small and big. It doesn’t work if you choose to enlarge a small idea. Conversely, a big idea doesn’t mean a great idea in itself. Scale is just a matter of content.

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