Anish Kapoor stars in new exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi

Anish Kapoor (Mumbai, 1954) is the star of the upcoming exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. In fact, from October 7, 2023 to February 4, 2024, the Florentine exhibition venue will host Untrue Unreal, a major exhibition conceived and realized with Anish Kapoor, the celebrated master who revolutionized the idea of sculpture in contemporary art. Curated by Arturo Galansino, director general of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the exhibition offers a journey through monumental installations, intimate environments and disturbing forms, creating an original and engaging dialogue with the architecture and the public of Palazzo Strozzi.

Through historical works and recent productions, the exhibition becomes an invitation to enter into direct dialogue with Kapoor’s art in its versatility, discordance, entropy and ephemerality. Palazzo Strozzi becomes a place concave and convex, integral and shattered at the same time in which visitors are called to question their senses.

Anish Kapoor’s works combine empty and full spaces, absorbent and reflective surfaces, geometric and biomorphic forms. Kapoor investigates space and time, the inside and the outside, inviting us to explore the limits and potentialities of our relationship with the world around us and to reflect on dualisms such as body and mind, nature and artifice.

A distinctive feature of Kapoor’s works is the way they transcend their materiality. Pigment, stone, steel, wax and silicone, to name but a few of the materials he works with, are manipulated, sculpted, smoothed, saturated and treated questioning the boundary between plasticity and immateriality. Color in Kapoor is not simply matter and hue, but becomes an immersive phenomenon, endowed with its own spatial and illusory volume at the same time.

From the 1980s to the present, Anish Kapoor has established himself as one of the most important artists on the international scene, eschewing categorization and distinguishing himself through a unique visual language that combines painting, sculpture and architectural forms. His works provoke awe and disquiet, destabilizing our perception and creating spaces and forms in which to experiment and reflect between the known and the unknown.

About the artist

Born in Mumbai, India, in 1954, Anish Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the mid-1970s, studying at Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea College of Art. He currently lives and works between London and Venice.

His works are exhibited in major permanent collections and museums around the world, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Tate in London, the Fondazione Prada in Milan, and the Guggenheim Museums in Venice, Bilbao and Abu Dhabi. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at: Galleria dell’Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin, Venice (2022); Modern Art Oxford (2021); Houghton Hall, Norfolk (2020); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2020); Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum and Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing (2019); Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires (2019); Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto (2018); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City (2016); Palace of Versailles, France (2015); Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow (2015); Walter Gropius Bau, Berlin (2013); Sakip Sabanci Muzesi, Istanbul (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2012).

Anish Kapoor represented Britain at the 44th. Venice Biennale in 1990, where he received the Premio Duemila. In 1991 he won the Turner Prize and subsequently received numerous international awards.

Also known for his architectural works, his public projects include: Cloud Gate (2004), Millennium Park, Chicago, USA; Leviathan (2011) exhibited at Monumenta 2011, Paris; Orbit (2012), Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London; Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created for the Lucerne Festival in Japan (2013); Descension (2014) installed at Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, USA (2017); the Naples Traiano and Università-Monte S. Angelo subway stops in Naples (in completion, 2002-2023).

Image: Anish Kapoor, Svayambhu, 2007. Photo: Dave Morgan. © Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2023

Anish Kapoor stars in new exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi

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