Lisson Gallery’s first permanent space in Beijing will be inaugurated by a series of new paintings by Anish Kapoor. Historically renowned as a sculptor, Kapoor has gained recent acclaim for his paintings, a part of his practice that was previously rarely seen yet an integral and longstanding element of his oeuvre. This will be Kapoor’s first solo exhibition with Lisson Gallery in China, marking his return to Beijing following his groundbreaking two-part solo exhibition in 2019 across the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Museum and Taimiao Art Museum of the Imperial Ancestral Temple.
This exhibition coincides with Kapoor’s much-anticipated dual site exhibition across Venice’s historic Gallerie dell'Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin, taking place during this year’s Venice Biennale; a presentation that powerfully reveals the full, visionary range of Kapoor’s practice, his painterly sensibilities and sculptural prowess. It was preceded in 2021 with a significant painting exhibition at Modern Art Oxford in the U.K.
The paintings in this exhibition traverse the expressionistic, the figurative and the abstract, in an intensely manifested imagery that conjures primal enactments of sacrifice, ritual and obliteration. In these paintings Kapoor extends the poetics of his sculptural language continuing his exploration of the borders between inner and outer states. Similarly embedded in these works is an exploration of colour and matter; landscape and body both merge and expunge the other within the picture plane in mark-making and hues that suggest tumultuous forces at work. Kapoor’s paintings seem to conjure the sublime landscapes seen by artists of the Romantic era such as JMW Turner, though it is one in which annihilation is viscerally present – in The Night Encloses (2021) dense mark-making evokes the depth of the earth as it swells and erupts. Alongside this, Inhuman (2020) depicts a fiery volcanic landscape, and in Oh Mother, Tell Me My Life Again (2021), we imagine the moon rising over the peak – a symbolic narrative of a new cycle.
Similarly indicating the subject of origin is the work titled Blackness From Her Womb (2021), a large-scale dark triptych that subtly radiates red, the colour of the interior that is fundamental to Kapoor’s wider practice. In India (2019), a painting the canvas is marked with red and white oil paint and wax, shredding the picture plane and defying the constraints of the painting tradition. Far from a departure from the many diverse elements of Kapoor’s practice, these paintings recall some of Kapoor’s most ambitious, distinguished works as seen worldwide, including Symphony for a Beloved Sun (2013), Svayambhu (2007) and My Red Homeland (2003).
The exhibition also features three floor-based works that extend the bounds of the canvas further. These works are at once painting, sculpture and performance, and like Kapoor's early pigment works they invite the viewer to bear witness to the aftermath of an enactment that has been ritualistically played out. But like the paintings on canvas we sense in these works that there remain two vital forces at play – the structural and formal alongside the gestural and formless. The lumpen matter that hangs suspended on frames, staffs or standing within votive like trays, has coagulated in works that appear to present an alchemical transformation of liquid to solid, a trope not only of painting but also very the essence of the materiality of sculpture itself.
安尼施·卡普尔 (Anish Kapoor) 的一系列全新绘画将为里森画廊在北京的首个永久空间揭幕。卡普尔的雕塑家身份最为人熟知，尽管绘画在其过去的实践中并不常见，却是重要且长期存在的创作媒介，他的画作最近也因在世界各地的展览项目备受瞩目并收获赞誉。本次展览是卡普尔在里森中国的首次个展，标志着他再度回归中国，此前在2019年，他曾于中央美术学院美术馆及太庙美术馆两处同时推出他在中国的首次美术馆个展。
与此同时，适逢威尼斯双年展，卡普尔现正于历史悠久的威尼斯学院美术馆及曼弗林宅邸两处同时呈现大型个展，充分彰显了他实践的远见、绘画的感染力和雕塑的高超造诣。在此之前，卡普尔于2021年在牛津现代艺术博物馆举办了重要的绘画展览。
本次北京个展中的绘画综合运用了表现主义、具象和抽象的手法，通过具有强烈表现力的图像，勾起人们对祭祀、宗教典礼和湮灭等原始仪式的想象。在这些画作中，卡普尔延续了他雕塑实践中的诗意，继续对内部和外部边界进行探索。这些作品还体现了卡普尔对颜色和物质的探究——在不同的绘画痕迹和色彩下，自然景观和肉血之躯互相融合又互相排斥，一股隐藏的力量在画布表面躁动着。这些作品似乎也让人联想起威廉·透纳 (JMW Turner) 等浪漫主义画家笔下的壮美景色，但卡普尔的画作却充斥着一种宇宙混沌开天辟地的能量。创作于2021年的《夜幕笼罩》(The Night Encloses) 以厚重的笔触刻画土地膨胀和崩裂的瞬间；来自2020年的《混沌》(Inhuman) 描绘了一场剧烈的火山爆发情景；而在2021年的《噢母亲，再次诉说我的身世》(Oh Mother, Tell Me My Life Again) 中山头升起的月亮则象征着一个全新周期的到来。
起源的主题还体现在创作于2021年的大型三联画《母体的黑》(Blackness From Her Womb) 中，深邃的黑色中隐约渗透出红色，而代表内部的红色是卡普尔更广泛实践中不可或缺的颜色。本次展览呈现的画作非但没有脱离卡普尔整体实践中丰富多样的元素，还让人想起他在世界各地展出的最大型和最别具一格的创作，例如2013年的《致心爱太阳的交响乐》(Symphony for a Beloved Sun)、2007年的《斯旺那布》(Svayambhu)，及2003年的《我的红色家乡》(My Red Homeland)。
同时展出的还有三件置于地面的作品，它们进一步扩展了画布的边界。这些作品既是绘画，也是雕塑和表演，就像卡普尔早期的色粉作品一样，它们邀请观众见证一个经过仪式洗礼的演出。正如帆布上的绘画，我们依然能从中感觉到两种重要的元素在施展力量，一种是规整有型的，另一种是奔放且无特定形态的。其中充满垂坠感的大型物质有的悬挂在支架上，有的则伫立在托盘容器内，仿佛是液态凝结成固态这一变化的缩影，这种转变不仅是绘画创作的过程，也是雕塑物质性的本质。
