Kapoor in Paris

Anish Kapoor’s Work Shown at the Grand Palais, Paris Ecole Nationale, and Galerie Kamel Mennour

Photo: Arrestedmotion.com

Leviathon Photo: Arrestedmotion.com

“Swallowed by the Monster”

While in Paris, I saw Anish Kapoor’s work in three locations in Paris. As part of the Monumenta Programme, Amish’s Leviathon was at the Grand Palais (pictured above).  To walk inside his gargantuan Leviathon is to submit, to become a Jonah.

In the chapel of the the Beaux-arts de Paris L’ecole nationale superieure, Kapoor mounted a series of cement sculptures — tall, grey and hallowed out. Kapoor’s work is a kind of “proto-architecture, …of edifaces from the dawn of humanity.”

While at the Kamel Mennour Galerie, a one-man exhibit Almost Nothing, showed Kapoor’s work “based on the idea of the void and immateriality.”

Kapoor’s pieces trick our perceptions in illuminating and delightful ways.

From The Guardian:

What Kapoor has created he’s called Leviathan, a 35-metre tall work – inflated, it’s 13,500 square metres .

Visitors first of all walk inside it, like going into the belly of a whale or a cathedral with three chambers veering off it. Then outside you see what it actually is – four connected balloon-type structures. Something from a science fiction film, perhaps, that’s taken refuge in this grand 19th-century glass building by the Seine.

Kapoor has dedicated Leviathon to Ai Weiwei, a dissident Chinese artist who has not been heard from  for the past month.  Kapoor wants all museums and galleries to close for one day in protest of Weiwi’s possible mistreatment by authorities.