Anish Kapoor

A gift from the artist to the present owner in 2005  

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are extremely fine scratches to the surface throughout which are associated to the polishing process. Extremely close inspection reveals a minute imperfection to the bottom left corner and another towards the centre left of the dish.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Anish Kapoor's stunning Untitled manifests the pioneering ingenuity in material and spatial possibilities that epitomise the very best output from this world-renowned sculptor. With its distinctive elliptical shape, the present work belongs to an iconic legacy of Kapoor’s monumental public sculptures, seeming particularly related to Cloud Gate of 2004. Unearthly and intangible, Untitled hangs like the vertical meniscus of a gravity-defying pool of liquid metal, sooner evoking a feat of nature than a man-made fabrication. The immaculately reflective material broadcasts a visual and physical weightlessness; nothing exists within its ellipse other than the remnants of reflection. From our very first glimpse, therefore, Untitled summates the dualities that have become synonymous with Kapoor's seminal canon: presence versus absence; infinity versus illusion; and solidity versus intangibility.

The concave metallic abyss of Untitled not only presents a panoramic vision of the space around it, but also facilitates an exceptional creative alchemy. Although at certain distances the visual information contained within the work is discernible as variously inverted and distorted echoes, these reflections are neither static nor predictable. Its subtly inverted shape and highly polished surface forge a unique prism that seems to liquefy all imagery captured within it. As the viewer's perspective changes these quicksilver layers of reflection undergo sudden metamorphosis into total fragmentation, providing an unprecedented visual experience of constant abstract and intangible flux; as successor to Constantin Brancusi's innovative employment of the highly polished surface, the transitory act of looking itself becomes dialectically inherent to the artwork.

The astounding physical properties of Untitled invoke a conceptual dialogue with our perception and interpretation of space. In ways similar to Lucio Fontana, whose groundbreaking and pioneering project of Spatialism abandoned dependence on the picture plane to seek another dimension beyond the canvas, Kapoor has spoken of his search for the "infinite" and made the iconic assertion that "to make new art you have to make a new space" (Anish Kapoor quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Hayward Gallery, Anish Kapoor, 1998, p. 52). Yet unlike Fontana, whose violent slashes and holes tear through the skin of painting as esoteric portals into a theoretical spatial infinity, Kapoor conceives a more accessible domain of "new space" that includes the viewer. As epitomised by the hanging Untitled, this is a clear break from precedent: "In a painting the space is beyond the picture plane, but in the mirrored voids it is in front of the object and includes the viewer. It's the contemporary equivalent of the sublime, which is to do with the self – its presence, absence or loss. According to the Kantian idea, the sublime is dangerous because it induces vertigo – you might fall into the abyss and be lost forever. In these sculptures you lose yourself in the infinite" (Anish Kapoor in conversation with Sarah Kent: Royal Academy of Arts Magazine, No. 104, Autumn 2009, p. 43). Indeed, the disorientation of Kapoor's silver dish incites a concurrent affirmation and negation of surface that entirely disseminates and sublimely confounds the viewer's gaze.   

The possibilities of dislocated subjectivity and inexplicable effects fascinate Kapoor, as he has explained: "The interesting thing about a polished surface to me is that when it is really perfect enough something happens – it literally ceases to be physical; it levitates; it does something else, especially on concave surfaces" (Anish Kapoor quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art, Anish Kapoor, 2008, p. 53). Nicholas Baume has described this phenomenon in reference to Kapoor's celebrated S-Curve of 2006, which is readily applicable to the later Untitled: "its shallow depth verifies the impossibility of its form concealing deep space; instead its skin becomes a hyperactive screen on which the viewer appears live, in multiple, simultaneous, abstracted iterations" (Nicholas Baume quoted in: ibid., p. 26). In this way we become participative in the work itself: the ever-changing viewing experience invoked by Untitled confers an utterly unique visual encounter.

Untitled not only projects a limitless realm of reflection, but also creates an entirely new sphere of sensation and, as Baume has noted, "The effect of Anish Kapoor's work is not so much to conjure illusion, but rather to manifest the abstract, fugitive possibilities of the real" (Ibid.). Using concrete material, Kapoor institutes the intangible and admits the possibility of the infinite. Simultaneously material and immaterial, Untitled finally provides a profound parallel to Jacques Lacan's declaration that "the illusion of space is different from the creation of emptiness" (Jacques Lacan in: Jacques-Alain Miller, Ed., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VII – The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960, New York 1986, p. 140).