Fearful Symmetry: Anish Kapoor’s “Leviathan” / Monumenta 2011
June 8, 2011 § Leave a comment
Filling the 13,500m2 space of Paris’ Grand Palais , Anish Kapoor’s Leviathan is every bit the colossus its Biblical title would suggest. Dedicated to still-missing Chinese artist, Ai Wewei, Leviathan was commissioned by France’s Ministry For Culture And Communication for this year’s Monumenta exhibition, an event now in its fourth year of challenging some of the world’s most renowned artists.
Yielding to the immense space proved advantageous for Britain’s Turner Prize-winning sculptor, whose four-chambered, inflated PVC structure makes explicit use of the glass-domed site, allowing Kapoor not only his trademark scale, but also to extend his close relationship with architecture. Of his spatially-interactive, perfectly symmetrical installation, Kapoor says this: “A single object, a single form, a single colour. My ambition is to create a space within a space that responds to the height and luminosity of the Nave at the Grand Palais. Visitors will be invited to walk inside the work, to immerse themselves in colour, and it will, I hope, be a contemplative and poetic experience.”
Titanic, womb-like, and all but drawing breath, you have until June 23rd to make this speculative artwork your own.
Eclect Elect 
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