Anish Kapoor at The Gallerie dell’Accademia

The Gallerie dell’Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin present a dual exhibition of retrospective and new work by Anish Kapoor from April 20 to October 9 in Venice. The show, curated by art historian Taco Dibbits, begins at the Gallerie with a seminal body of early pigment sculptures, 1000 Names [1979-1980], and “void” works created with “Kapoor Black,” a nanotechnology substance so dark that it absorbs more than 99.9% of visible light. The motif of an object’s skin as veil between the inner and outer world is further explored with the site-specific Pregnant White Within Me [2022], a giant bulge which distends the gallery and which is accompanied by various sacrilegious acts on the part of Kapoor. As he shoots at and cuts into the walls, he turns the hallowed fabric of the building inside out. This theme continues with the site-specific Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto [2022], a pendulous, painted mass of silicone protruding from the ceiling of the Palazzo’s entrance hall. It preludes a series of early and recent works in silicone, mirror, and pigment which displace and distort the viewer’s expectations of the object before her eyes, embodying darkness, emptiness, and reflection as physical realities.