Anish Kapoor’s first show in New York in four years demonstrates the artist’s ongoing exploration of the formal and conceptual framework that has informed his artistic practice for over three decades. In these new sculptural works, Kapoor brings together two major facets of his approach to the three-dimensional form, reflecting both the highly engineered and more organic processes within his oeuvre. At once austere and intimate, messy and refined, Kapoor’s work dually confronts and expands the basic nature of materiality and form.

Formed by densely textured layers of poured concrete and mounted on metal palettes, the multi-part installation comprised of twenty-two freestanding concrete sculptures evokes the sensorial nature of materiality and mass. Intentionally employing materials that could not hold their initial shape, Kapoor let the pieces unravel to create new organic forms that hover between contemporary object and ancient entity. These works linger in a state between coalescence and collapse, a relationship that speaks to Kapoor’s ongoing interest in the idea of “objectness” and the incomplete nature of the sculptural form.

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at Gladstone Gallery, New York

May 5 – June 9, 2012

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Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York / Brussels