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260109: MAK-Applied Arts/Contemporary Art: Anish Kapoor – Shooting into the Corner
MAK-Applied Arts/Contemporary Art: Anish Kapoor – Shooting into the Corner
Much Ado About Too Little
If you think of Anish Kapoor as a sculptor, who “copes with space” you will be disappointed by his current Vienna exhibit. The subtitle “new space filling works at the MAK” contradicts the actual implementation: absolutely nothing fills the space.
Admittedly: Kapoor is Kapoor, and his works, which at the MAK exhibition are mainly made up of crimson wax-Vaseline-mixtures, are impressive: the red dome-shaped heap, whose surface is shaven by a metal piece slowly sliding over it (“Past, Present, Future”) as well as the semi-spherical hollowed corner (“Shadow Corner”), where basically the same thing is going on. The central and title-giving work “Shooting into the Corner” achieved dramatic effects (especially at the vernissage). The work shows a cannon shooting wax bullets into a corner, and expectations are such that, at the end of the exhibit, the bullet-heap will weigh approximately 20 tons.
Currently the whole thing looks rather pathetic and has little relation to the spectacular and loud firing of the cannon. For security reasons visitors are kept at a distance through a high barrier, which, however, also intensifies the staginess. If there weren’t so little to see, this would actually not be a bad thing. The other sculptures are also too small for the large rooms: “Shadow Corner” seems as if it were stuck to the front part of the room, which otherwise is completely empty. “Past, Present, Future” is also surrounded by too much vacant space - only the semi-spherical wax circle (“Push-Pull II”) comes into its own.
Involuntarily, all of this stands in ironical contrast to the pathos, with which one would like to mediate Kapoor’s work (there is talk about “change, caducity, and new beginning” and about “philosophy of the hidden”, of the “intellectual and transcendent”) and as well as to the enormous efforts, which have been made. But possibly the heap will grow to such an extent that one could then really talk of “space filling works”.
Nina Schedlmayer
MAK-Applied Arts/Contemporary Art
1010 Vienna, Stubenring 5, until 19.04.09
www.mak.at
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
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260109
MAK - Museum für angewandte Kunst
1010 Wien, Stubenring 5
Tel: +43 1 711 36-0, Fax: +43 1 713 10 26
Email: office@mak.at
http://www.mak.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di 10-21, Mi-So 10-18 h
MAK - Museum für angewandte Kunst
1010 Wien, Stubenring 5
Tel: +43 1 711 36-0, Fax: +43 1 713 10 26
Email: office@mak.at
http://www.mak.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di 10-21, Mi-So 10-18 h
