Anish Kapoor has undertaken the third in The Unilever Series of commissions for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Renowned for his enigmatic sculptural forms that permeate physical and psychological space, Kapoor's inventiveness and versatility have resulted in works ranging from powdered pigment sculptures and site-specific interventions on wall or floor, to gigantic installations both in and outdoors. Throughout, he has explored what he sees as deep-rooted metaphysical polarities: presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place and the solid and the intangible.

Kapoor stated that his aim is to make object and installations that look as if imported 'from another world'. His carved stones, protruding wall sections, concave mirrors, and fleshy PVC membranes hover somewhere between pure geometrical order and biomorphic sensuality. Expanding upon Minimalist concerns with the body, Kapoor's work relies on the viewers individual associations to transform his spaces, enclosed and surrounding, and it is their experiences that ultimately bring the work to life.

For The Unilever Series, Kapoor has devised, specifically for the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, an installation that engages its massive dimensions and discovers the endless shifts in scale possible between the building and the audience. Unilever's support, totalling £1.25 million, allows Tate Modern to commission a new large-scale work for the Turbine Hall each year until 2004.

Marsyas, Anish Kapoor's 2002 sculpture for the Turbine Hall, comprises three steel rings joined together by a single span of PVC membrane. Two are positioned vertically, at each end of the space, while a third is suspended parallel with the bridge. Seemingly wedged into place, the geometry generated by these three rigid steel structures determines the sculpture's overall form, a shift from vertical to horizontal and back to vertical again.

Kapoor began the project in January 2002, soon realising that the only way he could challenge the daunting height of the Turbine Hall was, paradoxically, to use its length. He approached the space as a rectangular box with a shelf (the bridge) in the middle of it, and over many months, explored its potential through a series of drawings and sculptural maquettes. Human scale and the relationship of the viewer to the work was central to his thinking.

The PVC membrane has a fleshy quality, which Kapoor describes as being 'rather like a flayed skin'. The title refers to Marsyas, a satyr in Greek mythology, who was flayed alive by the god Apollo. The sculpture's dark red colour suggests something 'of the physical, of the earthly, of the bodily.' Kapoor has commented, 'I want to make body into sky'. Marsyas confounds spatial perception, immersing the viewer in a monochromatic field of colour. It is impossible to view the entire sculpture from any one position. Instead we experience it as a series of discreet encounters, in which we are left to construct the whole.

Then new work by Anish Kapoor will be on display from 9 October 2002- 23 March 2003.

About Anish Kapoor

Born in 1954 in Bombay, India, Kapoor was educated at Chelsea School of Art and has lived and worked in London since the early 1970's. He is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation and won the Premio Duemila prize at the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990. One year later, he was awarded the Turner Prize, and in 2001 received an Honorary Fellowship at the Royal Institute of British Architecture.

Kapoor's work has been exhibited world-wide and is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Tate Collection, the Museum of modern Art in New York, the Palacio de Velazquez, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. After his large one-man show at the Hayward Gallery in 1998 as well as that at CAPC Bordeux, the South Bank Show presented the first full-length television profile of Kapoor in February 1999. In 1999, Kapoor's gigantic Taratantara was commissioned by the Baltic, Gateshead, and was dramatically displayed in Naples in 2000.

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