Anish Kapoor

Oriental Blue Satin (2020)

Just as the experience of watching a football game is heightened inside the physical space of the stadium, the essence of a sculpture lies in its presence in three-dimensional space. Even the simplest forms and materials can have a striking effect, inviting us into a space or reflecting the world around us.

Using curved forms, a larger-than-life scale, and a frequently monochromatic color palette, Anish Kapoor transforms deceptively simple elements into innovative sculptures that interact with our environment. In the work Oriental Blue Satin, Kapoor asks us to pause and consider our surroundings to question the reality of what we see in front of us. The sculpture’s large, concave disk is treated with a special pigment that creates a deep, intense, and ever-shifting blue. Appearing at once flat and three-dimensional, Kapoor’s sculpture tempts us to step closer and inspect it from all angles. For the artist, this is a way to explore the relationship between the artwork, the viewers, and the world around us—challenging what we thought we knew about visual perception and physical forms. The result is a disorienting and mesmerizing effect.

Anish Kapoor is known for his large-scale sculptures and installations that play with perception, light, and space. Kapoor’s unconventional use of materials and forms have made him one of the most important artists of his generation. Blending optical illusion with science and engineering, Kapoor challenges our ideas of what three-dimensional objects look like by creating large, often monumental sculptures that serve as windows or voids within the spaces around them.