Anish Kapoor.BARBARA GLADSTONE Barbara Gladstone is an American gallery owner and art dealer. She owns the Gladstone Gallery on W. 24th St in New York City, and she represents many popular contemporary artists, including Shirin Neshat, Sarah Lucas, and Matthew Barney. GALLERY The marvel of Anish Kapoor's sandstone sculptures (all 1993) is that they are able to renew the sense of enigma and ineffability in·ef·fa·ble adj. 1. Incapable of being expressed; indescribable or unutterable. See Synonyms at unspeakable. 2. Not to be uttered; taboo: the ineffable name of God. that the best abstract art affords while seemingly not bound by the terms of its history, even as it uses them. Kapoor's stone is so uncannily equated with itself that it be comes unrepresentable, that is, untranslatable into terms other than its own. Through this ironic irreconcilability, Kapoor's stone achieves a "transcendent" state of self-identity with no need of a code--not even that of the "sublime," which measures transcendence by human expectations--to be brought to consciousness. Indeed, he subtly stretches ironic irreconcilability to the limit, making it appear freshly radical. Paradoxically, he makes hard stone see soft in a way that abstracts and "real-izes" hardness with special poignancy; h smooths rough-cut stone in a way that makes its roughness uncannily emphatic an "ec-static," calling special perceptual attention to it. Above all, he voids th solidity of stone in a way that unexpectedly makes solidity seem all the more implacable. Ingeniously renewing the tension between contradictory properties and thus affording an epiphany of their relationship, Kapoor suggests that each property disputes the other, seems even determined to eliminate it, though they depend on each other. Kapoor not only declares the necessity of both properties (a sculpture that looked completely soft and was all smooth would seem unreal, and one in which solidity had been completely voided void·ed adj. Heraldry Having the central area cut out or left vacant, leaving an outline or narrow border: a voided lozenge. would not exist), but foregrounds the enigma of their inseparability and interplay. Negative space is given a new, visionary dimension in Kapoor's sculptures, whic removes it altogether from the descriptive organic reference of, say, the voids of Henry Moore's figures. The void becomes an abyss that definitively solves th "problem" of Modern sculpture, which at its most consistent and intense is an attempt to finesse three-dimensionality and above all the narcissistic nar·cis·sism also nar·cism n. 1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself. See Synonyms at conceit. 2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in concept of the human body as the measure and most "perfect" realization of space as wel as scale. Kapoor's magic Bright Mountain, 1993--fraught with all kinds of crosscultural and ultimately transcultural associations--not only defeats bodiliness and scale through its aura of disembodiment dis·em·bod·y tr.v. dis·em·bod·ied, dis·em·bod·y·ing, dis·em·bod·ies 1. To free (the soul or spirit) from the body. 2. To divest of material existence or substance. and miniaturized monumentality, respectively, but affords a purer revelation of the silence of Being than his sandstone sculptures do. That is, the unrepresentable inner, gnostic illumination that his mountain--a three-dimensional model of Buddhist enlightenment and desirelessness--represents is suggestive of suggestive of Decision making adjective Referring to a pattern by LM or imaging, that the interpreter associates with a particular–usually malignant lesion. See Aunt Millie approach, Defensive medicine. the blissful stat that comes from the liberating recognition of the paradox of desire. (Desire is implicit in the "cycle" of contradiction between the properties at play in the sandstone sculptures. They are signs of its demiurgic dem·i·urge n. 1. A powerful creative force or personality. 2. A public magistrate in some ancient Greek states. 3. force in "sculpting sculpting Cosmetic surgery The surgical reshaping of a tissue. See Deep tissue sculpting, Facial sculpting. " the cosmos in all its contradictoriness.) To recognize the paradoxical force of desire with all one's being is to escape it: the Bright Mountain represents this profound intuition and freedom. The untitled sandstone sculptures are propaedeutic pro·pae·deu·tic adj. Providing introductory instruction. n. Preparatory instruction. [From Greek propaideuein, to teach beforehand : pro-, before; see to it: it is no accident that they were exhibited in the gallery's main space, while one had to go downstairs into a kind of inner sanctum, to climb the Bright Mountain--to transcend oneself, and complete one's journey on Kapoor's mystical path into the immeasurable, shapeless shape·less adj. 1. Lacking a definite shape. 2. Lacking symmetrical or attractive form; not shapely. shape space beyond the mountain's peaks. Just as the sand and stone (contradictory but equally dark materials from a gnostic point of view) have been transfigured, so nature will be reversed and become an unearthly brightness. |
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