Anish Kapoor’s “Descension” will continue swirling in Brooklyn Bridge Park through October 1 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Pier 1, Bridge View Lawn, Brooklyn Bridge Park
Daily through October 1, free, 9:00 am – 8:00 pm
www.brooklynbridgepark.org
www.publicartfund.org
descension slideshow
Mumbai-born, London-based artist Anish Kapoor has been creating crowd-pleasing works that alter the perception of viewers’ surrounding space for more than three decades. Such interactive large-scale pieces as Chicago’s “Cloud Gate,” affectionately known as the Bean, and New York City’s “Sky Mirror” draw people into their own reflections with shiny, highly polished colored surfaces, just as his smaller convex and concave sculptures provide warped views of reality, luring us in with mystery and awe. In addition, Kapoor questions the physicality of public spaces, as he did in his 2010 “Memory” exhibition at the Guggenheim, which included a giant bullet-shaped object that blocked one of the gallery entrances in addition to a dark rectangle that might or might not have been a way into the wall and beyond. Many of the ideas behind those works are evident in his latest intervention, “Descension,” a whirlpool twenty-six feet in diameter on view in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 through October 1. Near the center of the water is a beautiful but threatening swirling vortex that has taken on greater meaning in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. But Kapoor, who calls it “a sculpture that’s not a sculpture,” places a fence around the water, preventing visitors from getting close enough to fall in or take pictures of themselves reflected in the pool, the way they do with most of his other works.
A railing protects viewers from getting completely sucked into Anish Kapoor’s “Descension” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“We live in a time when the symbolic object in public space is no longer relevant. We don’t have a triumphant arch or the great hero on the horse or whatever else it is,” Kapoor said in a promotional video about the project, referring to monuments prior to the current raging debate over reevaluating certain honorary statues. “We’ve got to reinvent this thing. What we do have is the earth and the sky. So how does a work sit in that space, hold its scale, and not just become a decorative edifice.” The piece creates an inviting, ever-changing communal area for people to just relax and marvel at the wonders of the planet. “Anish Kapoor reminds us of the contingency of appearances: Our senses inevitably deceive us,” Public Art Fund director and chief curator Nicholas Baume explained in a statement. “With ‘Descension,’ he creates an active object that resonates with changes in our understanding and experience of the world. In this way, Kapoor is interested in what we don’t know rather than in what we do, understanding that the limit of perception is also the threshold of human imagination.” Kapoor might not always be a favorite in the art world itself, at least not since his exclusive acquisition of the rights to the “blackest black,” but he knows how to satisfy his audience, and he has done so again with “Descension.”