Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Catalogue Essay
“If the traditional sublime is in deep space, then this [the mirrored object] is proposing that the contemporary sublime is in front of the picture plane, not beyond it. I continue to make these works because I feel this is a whole new spatial adventure” — Anish Kapoor
Towering over seven feet tall, Anish Kapoor’s Untitled envelops theviewer in a mesmerizing, immersive multi-sensory experience. Executed in 2011, the circular concave stainless steel dish represents the culmination of Kapoor’s investigation into the formal and metaphysical possibilities of mirrored surfaces, as monumentalized in public installations such as Sky Mirror in New York City and Cloud Gate in Chicago.Within this larger body of work, Untitled belongs to a discrete series of concave dishes distinguished by the complex fracturing of their stainless steels surfaces into squares, hexagons or triangles — demonstrating Kapoor’s interest in the notion of fractals as multiples equaling a whole. Acquired directly from the artist’s studio and remaining in the same private collection since, Untitled is a quintessential example of the artist’s career-long pursuit into the phenomenological structures of experience.
As with related works in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, standing in front of this powerful sculptural intervention results in an uncanny experience. The world appears turned upside down as our bodies and surrounding environment are fractured into myriad reflections and fuse into an abstracted kaleidoscopic image that constantly fluctuates as one moves in front of and around the disc. Our senses are further heightened by the astonishing acoustic effects that arise when standing within the concave form. Just as Donald Judd’s three-dimensional rectangular and square objects prompted a reconsideration of the contingencies of space, Kapoor’s precisely fabricated mirrored concave discs encourage a reconsideration of the relationship between artwork, viewer and environment. Engaging us in a bodily experience in real time and space, Untitled ultimately manifests a powerful suspension of the quotidian.
