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| Anish Kapoor (photo: mi) |
Anish Kapoor, one of the world's most renowned contemporary
sculptors, is headed to Turkey in September for an exhibition at İstanbul's
Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM) in what will be the first major show here by the
Turner Prize-winning artist.
The Indian-born British artist, famed for his gigantic
public sculptures, including “Cloud Gate” in Chicago and the spiraling red
tower “Orbit” in London's Olympic Park, opened the doors of his south London
studio to journalists from Turkey last week on the occasion of his upcoming
İstanbul show.
Visiting an artist's studio is as exciting as flicking
through the manuscript of a novelist's upcoming book. It's almost impossible to
avoid a feeling of hesitation even if the invitation came from the artist
himself. And it felt exactly this way in Kapoor's studio -- only more magical.
Kapoor designs and creates his signature massive sculptures
in a former shutter factory that spreads over some 3,000 square meters. It's
impossible to catch a glimpse of each and every detail in this sprawling studio
humming with activity. While strolling through the studio's staff as they all
kept working on their various tasks in their white coats and masks, Kapoor and
the SSM exhibit's curator Norman Rosanthal came to greet us.
Before we begin, Kapoor quickly remarks: “This is not a
factory. It's rather a lab.” The 59-year-old artist says he has around 30
assistants and they are assigned with different tasks regarding the artworks
and Kapoor deals separately with each of his assistants' work.
The studio is divided into six sections and every room has a
different function. On the shelves you can see all kinds of materials, colors,
forms, huge industrial-scale machines that are mostly impossible to name one by
one.
Kapoor gets noticeably more conversational, recounting the
details of his practice as we turn from one room to another. It's impossible to
ignore the prominence of colors for Kapoor, who spent his childhood in India.
Pigments, shiny metal, mirrors, perfect forms made of wax, pure colors -- all
these make up Kapoor's work. Besides not being very easy to handle -- some
weigh several tons -- the works are complex, almost all featuring a combination
of engineering, architecture and technology.
Kapoor says his works are shaped by time and adds that he
usually doesn't start designing a work by knowing exactly what he will have in
the end. For Kapoor, art means transformation, and he doesn't work with certain
limits as to when he will finalize a particular work. “I never know for sure
when I'll start a sculpture and when I'll finish it. I often revisit a work,
and that can sometimes take years,” he says.
As SSM Director Nazan Ölçer says, Kapoor is “a profound and
multidimensional artist.” He is particularly influenced by the concept of
“voidness” and draws a lot of inspiration from literature and philosophy,
referring to Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer while speaking about his
work. Kapoor is also a painter but he doesn't like to talk about it and says he
doesn't have any plans on showcasing his paintings.
When we arrive at our last stop in our tour of Kapoor's
studio, he politely asks us not to take pictures of this section, which houses
the scale models of his upcoming work. And the scale model of the upcoming
showcase at the SSM is also there.
Inspired by Aya Sofya and Cappadocia
After leaving the studio on Farmers Street, we are taken to
his other, “secret” studio under a railway bridge. One of his assistants tells
the group of journalists how lucky we are: “I've been working with Kapoor for
years, and I've never been here before!”
This is a place where Kapoor keeps some of his work, some of
them are finished and some are unfinished. And among them, there are pieces
that will travel to İstanbul. “I visited İstanbul several times and I know
Cappadocia very well. Some of my works carry inspirations from there,” says the
artist, right before pointing at one of his works that resembles the famous
Wishing Column in Aya Sofya, a column with a hole in the middle covered by bronze
plates, which is very popular among tourists.
At that point, curator Rosenthal decides to give us a little
hint about the SSM show: “İstanbul is a city that is home to some very
significant samples of Roman and Ottoman stone architecture. So in the İstanbul
show, we'll also display Kapoor's stone sculptures that have never been
exhibited before.”
Musa İğrek, London
Today's Zaman
14/7/2013
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