ANISH KAPOOR (b. 1954)

ANISH KAPOOR Born in Bombay, India, and living and working in London, Kapoor emerged as one of Great Britain’s most important and influential sculptors in the 1980s, creating a vocabulary in raw pigments (he uses colors as symbols) and geometric and biomorphic forms. His monumental public and private pieces explore space, structure, and perception in an abstract fashion that he insists teeters on representation. His work continually touches on a myriad of metaphysical polarities, such as presence and absence, inward and outward, visible and invisible, light and dark. The viewer’s presence activates these relationships.

The Turner Prize-winning Kapoor — who has exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Lyon Biennale, and Documenta IX — became known in the United States for his monumental Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millennium Park. He has also created large-scale works for the Tate Modern in London and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, United Kingdom. His solo exhibitions include the Tate Gallery and Hayward Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Basel, Haus der Kunst Munich, Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, Reina Sofia in Madrid, MAK Vienna, Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul, and Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, In 2008, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston exhibited Kapoor’s first U.S. survey. He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2003 and a Knighthood in 2013 for services to visual arts.

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