“It is a space that recedes deep into the picture plane. This is the traditional space of the sublime” Anish Kapoor
Blood Mirror, 2000 reflects the intersection of material, color and volume, all of which form the crux of Anish Kapoor’s artistic practice. The present lot, concave in form, seems to levitate against the white wall it is affixed to, as its blood red hue radiates with velveteen tactility. Blood Mirror consumes the world around it, funneling the image into its basin and reimagining the scene as a psychedelic dream. The wavering light, glints and sparkles into the red dish, meditating between movement and stillness, location and dislocation. The composition plays with our senses, pushing and pulling us into a sublime other world. Kapoor comments, “In a painting the space is beyond the picture plane, but in the mirrored voids it is in front of the object and includes the viewer. It's the contemporary equivalent of the sublime, which is to do with the self - its presence, absence or loss. According to the Kantian idea, the sublime is dangerous because it induces vertigo - you might fall into the abyss and be lost forever. In these sculptures you lose yourself in the infinite."(Anish Kapoor in S. Kent, Royal Academy of Arts Magazine, Autumn 2009, no. 104, p. 43)
Within the mirror we are diminished in size, our perception is dramatically altered, and the image reflected back to us is one of subtracted weightlessness. The our environment has been compressed into a panoramic scene, all the world being absorbed into a tunnel with an indefinite destination. The artist explains, "The interesting thing about a polished surface to me is that when it is really perfect enough something happens - it literally ceases to be physical; it levitates; it does something else what happens especially with concave surfaces." (Anish Kapoor quoted in Anish Kapoor, exh. cat., Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston 2008, p. 53) Blood Mirror, 2000 absorbs every essence of Kapoor’s practice, the blood red concave form and “the mirror’s magic reduces both the depth and the weight of the world into a skin that floats on the surface of the steel.” (Anish Kapoor)
