• Anish Kapoor, Mountain | 2001

    Anish Kapoor

    Mountain | 2001

    A majestic presence of immense proportions, Kapoor’s Mountain is spectacular, awe-inspiring and visceral yet without self-conscious grandeur.  Composed of 120 water-jet cut layers, each just two centimetres thick, the structure rises a colossal 2.5 metres high and 5 metres wide. Executed with formidable precision, the layers lock together and yet convey the rugged, furrowed surface of a mountain formed from elemental rock. It possesses an imposing air of grandeur, an awe-inspiring evocation of seismic forces and tectonic movement. 

     

    Aluminium, composed of 120 water-jet cut 2cm thick layers mounted on an internal armature
    500 (long) x 281 (deep) x 255 (high) cm
    For Sale

  • "Viewed from the outside, Anish Kapoor's Mountain rises in front of us like a solid invincible structure. It possesses an air of granduer, furrowed and restless yet able to illicit a profound sense of awe in the onlooker. We find ourselves seduced by the challenge of scaling its heights in order to feel an even greater exhaltation and release when reaching the top. The Mountain's rim is disconcertingly narrow, and anyone standing there would be in danger of losing balance."

     

    Richard Cork

  • At the end of the 1980s, Kapoor visited Uluru or Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory of Australia. The visit was to prove of immense significance. 

     

     “…a very powerful proto-place and quite the most religious place I’ve ever been to…I’d get up at four o’clock every morning, drive to it, and spend the whole day doing the circumference walk. Unbelievable things revealed themselves every day. I felt deeply connected with it, and with a kind of possible interpretation, a symbolic interpretation of the holes and the strips of stone that seem to be leaning against it. I was amazed, not at the monolith, but at the way the monolith seemed to be made up of symbolic events.”

     

     

    Anish Kapoor
  • In the mid-1990s Kapoor created two large-scale mountains formed from layers of fibreboard, Untitled, 1994; Private Collection, Turin, and Untitled,...

    In the mid-1990s Kapoor created two large-scale mountains formed from layers of fibreboard, Untitled, 1994; Private Collection, Turin, and Untitled, 1994; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, one with soaring peaks and the other a gaping chasm - a ying and yang of masculinity and femininity. In 1994, Kapoor was commissioned by the municipality of Tachikawa to produce a sculpture: the result was the vast cast-iron Mountain, a monumental representation of the jagged crests of the preceding fibreboard Untitled. Seven years later, Kapoor was commissioned by the city of Malmö in Sweden to create the second Mountain, this time with an aluminium shell containing a central void, for the festival Bo-01, to celebrate the redevelopment of the industrial coastal landscape of the city into urban living. Mountain on display here is the second iteration of an edition of three of the sculpture, with the first the Malmö version and the third yet to be fabricated.

  • "...we find ourselves confronted by absense rather than presence."

    "Kapoor however is not content with engendering a straightforward feeling of delight, his work is complex and it's multi-layered meanings become clear once we succeed in peering over the apex of Mountain. For there, instead of creating a peak, or even a reassuringly flat ledge, he leads our eyes down into a void. Suddenly, without any warning, we find ourselves confronted by absense rather than presence." Richard Cork

  • Kapoor has a longstanding fascination with the void: a series of works including Descent into Limbo, 1992; De Pont Museum,...

    Kapoor has a longstanding fascination with the void: a series of works including Descent into Limbo, 1992; De Pont Museum, Netherlands, preceded Mountain, 2002. Speaking to Nicholas Baume, Kapoor described the void as “not an empty dark space, but a space full of darkness”. Unlike Descent into Limbo, the void of Mountain cannot be penetrated, and only seen from above as the towering structure prevents vision into the centre. The void provokes an awe-inspiring sublimity, the promise and terror of infinity, the fear and delight of being consumed. Vertigo-inducing blackness both fascinates and repels us. For Kapoor, who has undergone decades of psychoanalysis, the void is seen in Jungian terms: the blackness of the void threatens the disintegration of the ego in the unknown, the loss of one’s ability to distinguish between oneself and one’s environment. 

  • For more details and price contact the gallery 
  • Anish Kapoor , Biography

    Anish Kapoor

    Biography

    Anish Kapoor is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Perhaps most famous for public sculptures that are both adventures in form and feats of engineering, he manoeuvres between vastly different scales, across numerous series of work. 

     

    Born in Bombay, India in 1954, Kapoor lives and works in London. He studied at Hornsey College of Art (1973–77) followed by postgraduate studies at Chelsea School of Art, London (1977–78). Recent major solo exhibitions include Chateau de Versailles, Versailles (2015); The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow (2015); Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul (2013) and Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (2013). He represented Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale (1990), for which he was awarded the Premio Duemila. He won the Turner Prize in 1991 and has honorary fellowships from the London Institute and Leeds University (1997), the University of Wolverhampton (1999) and the Royal Institute of British Architecture (2001). He was awarded a CBE in 2003 and a Knighthood in 2013 for services to visual arts. Most recently he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford (2014). His work is held in all major international public collections including the De Pont Foundation, Tillburg, Holland; Tate, London, UK; MoMA, New York, USA; and the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Otterlo, Holland.