Anish Kapoor
Tall Tree and the Eye, 2009
Stainless steel and carbon steel
14 x 6 m
Installation: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2010
Anish Kapoor
Tall Tree and the Eye, 2009, Detail
Stainless steel and carbon steel
14 x 6 m
Installation: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2010
Jeff Koons
Tulips, 2006
High chrome content stainless steel
203x460x520cm
Richard Serra
The Matter of Time, 2005
Weathering Steel
Overall dimensions variable
Anish Kapoor
Greyman Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, Beauty Evoked, 2008-09
Cement, 48 parts
Overall dimensions variable
Installation: Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009
Photo: Erika Ede © FMGB Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa, 2010
Anish Kapoor
Shooting into the Corner, 2008-09
Mixed media
Dimensions variable
MAK - Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna
Installation: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2010
Photo: Erika Ede © FMGB Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa, 2010
Yesterday I visited the Guggenheim Bilbao, designed by the great canadian-american architect Frank Gehry. Its an incredible work of art in itself, and the current installations that are housed in it are congruent with the atmosphere that such a modern museum creates. The current exhibitions include Henri Rousseau, Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Selections from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection, Anish Kapoor and Richard Serra's The Matter of Time.
Although each installation was stunning and provoking in its own right, my favourite exhibit was that dedicated to the works encompassing the 30 year career of Anish Kapoor, the Guggenheim Bilbao's first large-scale solo exhibition of the artist.
Installed throughout the museum's second floor, the exhibition presents a series of visual and psychological experiences that draw you into the artist's search for a poetic sculptural language. His sculptures are made from a range of highly reflective or tactile materials such as pure powdered pigment, cement, wax and stainless steel.
For me, the highlight of the exhibit was Kapoor's Shooting into the Corner, (2008-09), which presents a canon, triggered by an attendant, that shoots enormous wedges of red wax across the gallery space over the course of the exhibit, transforming the museum into a site of violent explosion and dramatic accumulations.
