Anish Kapoor . Memory

Dates: Nov 30 2008 – Feb 01 2009

Location: Deutsche Guggenheim
Unter den Linden 13/15 – Berlin
Hours: Daily 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursdays to 10 p.m.

curated by Sandhini Poddar

www.deutsche-guggenheim.de
 
Anish Kapoor (b. 1954, Bombay, lives and works in London) is one of the most celebrated sculptors of our time. Since the early 1980s, his investigation into notions of scale, volume, color and materiality has redefined contemporary sculpture. Kapoor is best known for his explorations into the concept of the void. His sculptures, installations and public art test the phenomenology of space, and have historically been characterized by intensely tactile or reflective materials, including colored pigments, wax, fiberglass, stone, polished stainless steel and PVC that resist any narrative or aesthetic reading. What interests Kapoor is what lies below the surface – in the potential of the object to be self-evident. With large-scale sculptural installations such as Marsyas (Tate Modern, 2002) and Cloud Gate (Chicago Millennium Park, 2004), viewers are drawn into powerful sensory encounters that merit total physical immersion.

Deutsche Guggenheim’s ambitious commission titled Memory is an intervention in the gallery that prevents any one complete viewing or experience of the work. Fabricated of 24 tons of rusting Cor-Ten steel, with industrial tiles and bolts exposed, the sculpture loosly resembles a balloon or egg-shaped object. The sculpture’s steel surface engages the extremities of two of the gallery walls, including the ceiling, with the utmost precision. A temporary route through Deutsche Guggenheim will connect three distinct access points to view the sculpture, including one interior view of a cavernous, seamless void in Cor-Ten steel. In negotiating this inaccessibility to view the work in its entirety or walk around it as an object, a viewer’s memory thus becomes a methodology for understanding. As part of the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art initiative, the commission is scheduled to travel to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2009. The accompanying catalogue offers a multi-disciplinary approach to contextualize the work through sociology, philosophy, postcolonial and architectural theory and structural analysis.