Anish Kapoor’s installation for Monumenta 2011 is a true architectural piece of work, an exceptional discourse about interior and exterior, limits, structure, and scale.
Ever since its opening during the World Exhibition of 1900, Grand Palais was a major exhibition space in France’s capital. Due to its vast volume flooded with light and the spectacular structure of the roof, it could shelter variegated events, from Chanel fashion parades, car fairs, horse races to the work of the most famous world artists.
Text: Stefan Tuchila
Photo: Stefan Tuchila
This article was published in zeppelin magazine number 96.
Starting with 2007, after Anselm Kiefer’s first intervention, Grand Palais has hosted the Monumenta event. Dedicated to large scale monumental art, the exhibition lasts for two months and offers the contemporary artist an opportunity to manifest himself freely, yet his work should not touch the structure of this historic monument. Kiefer (2007) was followed by Richard Serra in 2009 (see the 20th issue of our magazine), and Christian Boltanski in 2010. In 2012 the guest artist will be the French artist Daniel Buren, while the star of the day is the sculptor Anish Kapoor.
His installation is equally conceptually complex and simple through its presence and language. I think Kapoor’s “Leviathan” is the most “architectural” intervention I have ever seen within the Monumenta programme. Its challenging of the existing space, the concept of void, the concave-convex interplay, the use of stretched and sensitive membranes like human skin recur in Kapoor’s work, and this time the themes yield in successful representations.
Interior
The route through the installation starts from the passage through a pressurized frame that blocks the entrance into the gigantic balloon that conquers the interior of Grand Palais. The 72,000 sq m of void are contained by the translucent surface, thus wrapping the visitors in continual red. The uniform color takes every inch of the interior space indiscriminately; there is no escape from this prevailing hue that unifies and connects all the perceived elements.
Kapoor thinks that “red creates psychologically and physically deeper shadows than black or blue”. The use of his favorite color invites one to completely immerse into parallel dimension and once you walk beyond the threshold with the pressurized frame you enter a different world. Perception has been modified along with several sensorial parameters (smell, temperature, humidity) that mark the difference between interior and exterior. The only relationship with the outside world is the variation of light and the interplay of shades of the filigreed structure of the ship.
Exterior
Once you stepped out from the Leviathan’s womb, you reach the luminous ship of the Grand Palais. Now, the relation has changed and senses are back to normal, while the impressive volume of the sculpture is bathed in the playful light of the 19th century structure. Kapoor appeals to the transition between interior and exterior to play a trick on the gigantic space, which is the major quality and problem of the hall. Thus, the installation imposes itself in relation to the surrounding void through harmony both in scale in chromatic, different from the one perceived inside and perfectly attuned to the hue of metallic structure.
The object is mainly perceived visually, yet direct physical interaction plays an important role. Your touch of the Leviathan’s skin sends the noise and motions of those “trapped in” and the slight changes of the volume caused by the variation of the interior pressure.
Anish Kapoor describes the intervention as “one singular object, singular colorless form”, a simple object with such powerful and fluid shape that it seems to have been issued from nature without human intervention. The result is essentially architectural, a place that challenges and reinvents familiar spatial relations.
