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After Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra and Christian Boltanski, Anish Kapoor is the one to have taken up with enthusiasm the challenge of Monumenta: the monographic art project which, for some years now, the Grand Palais of Paris has been dedicating to a contemporary artist invited to create a work able to interact with the wide space (35 metres by 13,500 cube metres) of the nave that the building is pivoted on. The new installation by the Indian-born British architect-sculptor has been standing for a few days in the Parisian museum. Entitled Leviathan, the work in inspired to the mythic biblical monster taken from the Book of Job, a creature without a specific shape (between dragon and snake) which evokes an imminent catastrophe.
Kapoor worked for various months on this installation, alongside a team of technicians and engineers in order to create a setting that would amaze visitors, generating a “moment of aesthetic and physical awe”. And so visitors are sucked into the huge sculpture characterised inside by very high walls in red fabric of various consistency (the artist considers red “a means of emotional investigation”), with tones that change with the passing of the hours throughout the day.
Just outside the structure, you see what it actually is: a giant purple PVC amorphous figure, 100 metres long and 17 metres tall, almost touching the glass ceiling and invading most of the exhibition area. Even this time the architect has managed to amaze his public, seizing fully the intimate intention of opening sculpture to new innovative forms.
During the inauguration of the work, Kapoor dedicated his latest work to the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, arrested in China on 2nd April and unheard of since then.
Tags: Grand Palais, Monumenta, Leviathan, Anish Kapoor
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