Anish Kapoor: Descension

Internationally acclaimed as one of the most significant contemporary artists, Anish Kapoor returns to Italy with Descension, an exhibition project conceived specially for the former cinema and theatre space of Galleria Continua in San Gimignano. The heart of the show is the installation in the stalls area, Descension, from which the exhibition takes its name.

Kapoor belongs to the line of artists who pose alchemical questions, and who also proceed by way of paradoxical concepts, producing works that push us beyond appearance in search of being. In so doing he makes us reflect on the latent state of the power of matter itself, of the energy contained within it, and for this reason a metaphor of the entire universe. The work of Kapoor is distinguished by its boundless capacity to reinvent artistic language, in its monumental dimension as in its more intimate one. From his very first works through to the more recent and monumental installations in museums and public spaces, the themes of his inquiry, which is also, and first of all, philosophical inquiry, centre on the human being and selfawareness, on the mind and the experience of the things surrounding it, and on the universality of time and space.

Descension features a series of new sculptures in alabaster, in which Kapoor has carefully carved out a highly refined section. They invite the spectator to reflect upon the concept of the infinite and the mysteries of time buried within
their form and substance. One of the most distinctive aspects of Kapoor’s work, especially the ones in stone, is the sense of eternity they convey. Thanks to the translucent qualities of the material the artist manages to reinforce the sense of
the transition from painting to sculpture and from painting to aerial dissolution and through to becoming light. The intense red of some of these sculptures, as of other works in the show, is suggestive of something organic.