Bite 100: Anish Kapoor - When I am Pregnant, 1992

When I am Pregnant, 1992, fibreglass and paint, 198 x 152 x 15 cm

"The idea that if I empty out all the content and just make something that is an empty form, I don't empty out the content at all. The content is there in a way that is more surprising than if I tried to make a content."

                                                         - Anish Kapoor

Standing before the wall of the gallery (top image) there appears to be a skillfully painted aberration. The work only reveals itself when seen in profile - it consists of a perfectly executed bulge protruding seamlessly from the white gallery wall.

In a sentence: Kapoor recontextualises the idea of 'the painted surface', in the language of architecture, through a witty visual pun on the mythologised 'white wall' of the contemporary gallery and the clichéd idea of the artist 'pregnated' in the service of 'Art'.

Yet this is art that to be understood must be experienced.

An all-encompassing art experience, the work has no beginning and no end - it is nothing and it is the entire wall, the entire room (All of this and nothing). Altering the viewers perception of the space, it is a radical inversion of the 'art object'; art as absence, void. Pure concept actualised in being viewed.

This is art that to be strictly 'understood' is to miss the point entirely.


Currently installed at Manchester Art Gallery as part of the exhibition Flashback.

Images:
Made By Gemma