Anish Kapoor loves to construct sculptures out of Gesso and Pigment, viagra approved two materials in which colour is often illusionary and dependent on the viewer. The first room of the exhibition is a celebration of gesso. The delicate sculptures cover the gallery floor, remedy whilst occasionally bursting from the gallery wall, viagra dosage leaving a smudge of pigment against the cold white gallery space.
Kapoor is a master of subverting the white space. An all-white piece entitled When I am Pregnant (1992) balloons gently from the right hand wall like the delicate condition it is based on. At first unnoticeable, these sculptures force the viewer to move their legs around the gallery space.
![Kapoor_Greyman Cries[1]](http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Kapoor_Greyman-Cries1.jpg "Kapoor_Greyman Cries[1]")
The colours of these sculptures undulate within the white, white space of the Royal Academy, portraying, through a combination of their organic forms and titles, the romantic imagination of Kapoor. A sample title: As if to Celebrate, I Discovered a Mountain Blooming with Red Flowers.
Walking into the second room the viewer is greeted with an awe-inspiring wall of yellow pigment that dominates the field of vision entirely. The size is reminiscent of the history paintings that sought to strike the terror of the sublime into the heart of the viewer, through the momentous depiction of dangerous landscapes.
![Kapoor_Yellow, Royal Academy of Arts[1]](http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Kapoor_Yellow-Royal-Academy-of-Arts1.jpg "Kapoor_Yellow, Royal Academy of Arts[1]")
The hue of Yellow (1999) burnt into my retina as if I was staring into the midst of a bee colony’s secret stash of pollen, collected over hundreds of years, until it collapsed in on itself.
![Kapoor_Shooting into the Corner b[1]](http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Kapoor_Shooting-into-the-Corner-b1.jpg "Kapoor_Shooting into the Corner b[1]")
Next to this work’s delicate intrusion into the space, Shooting into the Corner (2008-9) has caused red pigment to be dramatically splattered as if a great battle had recently taken place. The outcome of twenty pounds of paint being fired from a cannon every twenty minutes is a sea of red, red pigment smashed and rotting on the gallery floor. For me it summoned up the potential violence that is inherent in painting, as well the history of the Royal Academy, i.e. its desperate need to establish itself within academia.
After the violence of the noise of the cannon, the room of mirrors or Non-Objects is an unrelenting joy. Various visitors stared and examined the reversal of normal perspective that occurred in these hall-of-mirrors exhibits. In its breakdown of accepted proportions the body became architectural as it was broken down into linear compositions. The artist again plays with notions of the sublime projecting it onto the gallery space rather than within the frame of a painting. What is so wonderful about Kapoor is his ability to make new space and new work that is not a rehash of art history but a re-envisioning of the theories of sublime and the unconscious that have deeply impacted the development of modern art.
![Kapoor_Hive, Royal Academy of Arts[1]](http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Kapoor_Hive-Royal-Academy-of-Arts1.jpg "Kapoor_Hive, Royal Academy of Arts[1]")
Hive is a monumental sculpture rammed into a spherical gallery. Built in a ship yard, its metallic hues dominate the space, as the viewer has to carefully pick their way around it. I suggest walking round the back as the base of the sculpture disappears into a hole.
![Key 016_a jpeg[1]](http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Key-016_a-jpeg1.jpg "Key 016_a jpeg[1]")
Dominating the five galleries that run along the side of the exhibition, Syayambh (a Sanskrit word meaning self-generated) (2007) is a celebration of wax and engineering. Embedded on tracks, this massive block squeezes its way through the gallery doors, leaving traces of itself in tiny piles along the floor. A celebration of the wax often used in the moulding of Renaissance sculptors, it is a continuation of Kapoor’s celebration of the mediums of art in their own right rather than simply tools of the trade.
The final room contains Slug (2009), a combination of glossy vulvic-inspired openings and unfinished marked tentacles. Based on the sculpture Laocoon and his Sons, it is evocative of the snake that grapples and destroys. Another reference to the downfall of man in the Garden of Eden. It is nonetheless a jaw dropping piece of design.
Categories ,Anish Kapoor, ,Royal Academy
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