Sculptor Anish Kapoor on sex, race, big art and Brexit
As his heavyweight exhibition opens in Hong Kong, the British-Indian artist behind Chicago’s monumental Cloud Gate offers a glimpse under the mirror-like skin of his sculptures and the controversies some have sparked
One recent wet night, at about 10pm, a crane was manoeuvred into Theatre Lane, in Central, and positioned at the back of the Pedder Building. It was there to hoist sculptures by the British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor from street level, through a 1.4-metre x 5-metre window and into the Gagosian Gallery, on the seventh floor. Three crane-hire companies had already declined the task, apparently declaring it impossible.
Kapoor is known for the monumental nature of his creations. For the 2012 London Olympics, he designed the ArcelorMittal Orbit, which, at 114.5 metres, is Britain’s tallest sculpture. In Chicago, his stainless-steel work, formally titled Cloud Gate (2006), but generally referred to as The Bean, is 110 tonnes. His imagination loves to play with volume and space, and as he’s got older – he’s now aged 62 – his sculptures seem to have become correspondingly bigger. They tend to bear names like Leviathan (2011, Paris) and be part of huge projects, such as the proposed (but only partially completed) series of five sculptures in Englandofficially designated the Tees Valley Giants.
By such standards, the Gagosian’s eight exhibits were diminutive. Still, it was the job of the crane driver, plus a specialist team of fine-art installers, to ensure Kapoor’s inner creativity and the outer dimensions of the grade II-listed Pedder Building were a perfect fit.
Matters were complicated by renovation scaffolding on the eighth floor. At one point, a 2.5-tonne crate in mid-air was found to be 5cm off-kilter and had to be gingerly brought back down. It contained Kapoor’s 2006 stainless-steel piece, Vertigo. Work continued, through the rain, until 6am.
“That’s 1,400 kilos ... That’s a tonne ... That’s a tonne and a half ... The whole show’s about 12 tonnes,” calculated the crew supervisor the following afternoon, as he pointed to a selection of unopened crates. (Gagosian prefers that the company remains unnamed but it was described as “one of 10 in the world” who could do this job.) It was difficult to hear the supervisor’s voice above the shriek of ripping tape as the works were gradually unboxed. Mirror (Black) (2014) was already gleaming on a wall, throwing back a deep, unsettling reflection. Under the gallery lights, the mounting layers of sloughed-off packing skin held a lovely artificiality: you could imagine Gagosian holding an exhibition of enormous photographs – by Andreas Gursky, say – of this strange, behind-the-scenes unveiling.