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“Let me do this to you”

How do you write about art that seems to disappear in front of you?

I’ve been trying to answer this question since I saw the exhibition of Anish Kapoor’s work, Past, Present, Future, last week at the ICA. We were there opening night, and listened to the discussion between Kapoor (if his name doesn’t sound familiar, Cloud Gate, aka the bean in Chicago might) and Homi Bhabha (whose name probably won’t sound familiar unless you’ve spent time in post-colonial theory seminars). In that conversation, Kapoor talked about how “art can elongate that moment of looking”.

His work on display at the ICA certainly does that. The oddly smooth When I Am Pregnant is a bump in the wall — a description which makes it sound crude and not magical at all — but it is mesmerizing. Part of the magic is the way it seems to disappear if you look straight at it: your eyes have nowhere to focus in a sea of white without sharps edges.

Brandy Wine is an enormous deeply red plate on the wall in which you can see yourself and and other sculptures in the room inverted and reflected darkly; only if you stand very close to it will the rest of the room disappear. Marsupial is a pocket in wall that seems to lean with its pouch against the museum wall. My Body Your Body is impossibly blue pigment set in the museum wall in such a way that first it seems to be two-dimensional, then you lose yourself in the mystery of the darkness. S-Curve is a strip of nearly funhouse magic mirror, a fascinating silver ribbon running through the middle of the exhibition. Past, Present, Future, is a giant hemisphere of dark red wax that appears to be bisected by a metal wall — in time you see the wall is slowly scraping back and forth across it, and the low machine hum of the motor suggests the slowest beating heart.

These descriptions don’t do the sculptures justice. Photographs can approximate the experience, (and oh, did I wish photography was allowed at the ICA, so I could try to share what I saw, the way I saw it) but still, something is missing in not being there in person. Kapoor’s sculptures involve the viewer: you are there, reflected, distorted, struggling to see, mesmerized, a participant in an encounter. Kapoor said in that talk, “let me do this to you” and you walk out of this exhibition a bit stunned, and glad for letting him.

Fantastic job writing about this show!
I know it helped that I’m already in love with the Bean, my all-time favorite piece of serious art/playground equipment, and I am entirely ready to let Kapoor’s art do it to me–but the way you wrote simply about the simple art that is anything but simple took me into it very well.
I wish I could write like this art….

P.S. What’s the ICA?

Thank you, Fresca. I’m trying to challenge myself and write about art more often, so it is very good get feedback and know it’s something I actually can do.

The ICA is The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, but they rarely ever use their whole name.