Untitled, from 2008, represents a characteristic work by Anish Kapoor, an artist renowned for pushing the medium of sculpture to its limits. It belongs to a series of stainless steel works which explores the potential for sculpture to transcend its material presence to express human experience.

Kapoor has referred to himself as “Mr. In-Between” due to the myriad of cultural influences that have shaped his life. Born in Mumbai, at the time known as Bombay, in 1954, he was already pulled by divergent traditions as his mother was Jewish and his father Hindu. His early life, therefore, was distinguished by its rich layers of heritage and influence, which later influenced his artistic output. In 1973, he left India for England, where he studied first at Hornsey College of Art (1973-77) and then at the Chelsea School of Art (1977-78). His British art education similarly exerted its influence upon him, further complicating the layers of cultural history that infiltrate his work.

Kapoor embraces his Indian, Hindu, Jewish and British history, producing work which is a product of this unique fusion. The most apparent reference to Indian culture is in his iconic pigment pieces which were inspired by the powdered pigments used in Hindu festivals and worship. The influence of his Indian heritage is not expressed via colour in Untitled, but rather through reference to an Indian philosophy and attitude to art making.

An essential aspect of Kapoor’s work is what he terms its "auto-generation". This concept draws on the Svayambhu, a Sanskrit term referring to that which is created of its own accord rather than by the hand of man. This stainless-steel work demonstrates Kapoor’s commitment to erasing all evidence of the traditional notion of the artist’s hand through its strict, geometric structure which lacks the imperfections indicative of the man-made. Kapoor insists "the form… made itself", arguing that, rather than a product of self-expression, his sculptures are a product of a process in which "The work…lead[s] the artist, not the artist the work" (In conversation with Nicholas Baume, first published as Mythologies in the Making in Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future, exh. cat., ICA Boston, 2008). While this has roots in an Indian philosophy, Minimalist and Conceptual art similarly explore the self-erasure and rejection of art as a process of self-expression. Kapoor’s concept of auto-generation is echoed, for example, in the words of Sol LeWitt: "The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete" (Sol LeWitt, Sentence on Conceptual art, first published in New York, 1969, and Art-Language, England, May 1969. For this reason, Kapoor has argued that modernism and Asian art in fact correspond well with each other, as both Asian and modernist artists believe that "the self isn’t the entity out of which all expression is determined. The self is only a means" (In conversation with Nicholas Baume).

Kapoor plays on tensions between presence and absence, real and imaginary space and the material and the immaterial in Untitled. The polarities are explored in Kapoor’s work in the use of the physical object, in this case highly polished and fragmented stainless steel, to represent the metaphysical. The seemingly irreconcilable entities of material presence and intangible experience are conflated in his work, thereby expressing his belief that sculpture is about experience rather than materials. Like his contemporaries studying sculpture in the 1970s, Kapoor rejected the concept of truth to material as exemplified by the established figure of Anthony Caro, whose work he found “completely without relevance”. Rather, Kapoor wanted to "put truth to materials to one side and say that art is about lots of things that are not present" (In conversation with Nicholas Baume). In Untitled, Kapoor treats presence as an unstable entity. The boundaries between finite object and infinite space are blurred through the fracturing effects of the multi-faceted, reflective metal. The supposedly stable object has become somewhat dematerialised, echoing Karl Marx’s assertion that “all that is solid melts into air”. (Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party, chapter one).

Kapoor’s transformation of the status of the material object has strong psychological implications for the viewer - as they question the object, they question themselves. The counterintuitive spatial effects of the reflective surface disrupt traditional perception. The artist describes this as: "What your eyes see your hands will always try to affirm. Much of dealing with the non-material is about this confusion between the hand and the eye, the ear and the eye, when the thing that you look at is uncertain, your body demands a kind of readjustment, it demands certainty" (In conversation with Marcello Dantas, from Ascension, Rio de Janeiro/Brazil/San Paulo, 2006–2007). Untitled not only confounds visual reality and material reality through its distorted reflections, but it also implicates the viewer in the creation of the piece. Designating the viewer as a co-creator of the work signifies that the eye is no longer simply a visual tool, but also carries psychological and metaphysical significance.

The visual distortion of space featured in Untitled is unsettling for the viewer. Kapoor treats space as a material in itself, asserting that “this may be very Indian, but space is not void. Space is a material. It is physical.” Through Kapoor’s vision space becomes “the everyday but also the unhomely – unheimlich – the unresolved.” The unsettling effects of Untitled have been compared by the artist to the 19th century notion of the sublime: that which inspires awe, fear and wonder. He describes the mirrored space as “a modern sublime, a ‘now’ sublime, a ‘here’ sublime.” Kapoor further unsettles the viewer by drawing on the traditional association of the mirror as a symbol of self-discovery and self-knowledge. This is overturned by the fractured reflections of Untitled, which produce distorted images of the viewer, unending and unique. (In conversation with Nicholas Baume).

The visual abstraction of space evoked in Untitled resonates with the contemporary age of the digital image. Kapoor’s artistic career coincided with the advent of the internet and cyberspace. Not only did he use computers to generate the morphed shapes of early sculptural work, but articulated the digital volatile image in his work. For Kapoor, the ambiguous space articulated in Untitled and other works from the series reflects the ambiguity of the internet: “Where does the internet reside? Where is that space? I suggest that it is an intermediary space that is between all sorts of things, residing seemingly nowhere, and it exists somewhere.”

Untitled epitomises Kapoor’s sensual yet highly modern approach, embedded in the contemporary age of technology, yet referring to the historical legacies of India. Through its ever changing, volatile nature this piece refers to the mythic, beyond the material.