Anish Kapoor - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Thursday, November 16, 2017 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    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 the viewer 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.

Property from a Distinguished Japanese Collector

43

Untitled

signed and dated "Anish Kapoor 2011" on the reverse
stainless steel
90 1/2 x 90 1/2 x 18 in. (229.9 x 229.9 x 45.7 cm.)
Executed in 2011.

Estimate
$700,000 - 1,000,000 

Sold for $1,515,000

Contact Specialist
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Evening Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1278
aloiacono@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York Auction 16 November 2017