Anish Kapoor can demand quite a lot from his audience. For some, gazing into dark whirlpools, into the blackest of black, may be unsettling, depending on one's state of mind. Added to that is dark red wax, one of his favorite materials: It symbolizes flesh and blood. Associations that cut straight to the core.
And yet, the artist seems cheerful and relaxed talking about his work. At times, however, it makes even him feel a little uneasy. Take, for example, the major exhibition of his work currently on view at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany. In an interview with ARD, he walks around "First Body," a sculpture made of resin.
"It is, if you like, fleshy. Sort of doing this rather strange thing," he laughs, as his shoulders shudder.
Anish Kapoor's 'First Body' is currently on show at the Lehmbruck Museum in DuisburgImage: Christoph Reichwein/dpa/picture allianceOne reason why Kapoor has such a visceral reaction to his own installations is probably because be begins working with the material without knowing how it will end up.
"I go into the studio and say, 'I don't know what to do. I'm lost.' Then stuff arises and it's the thing in the room that you work with," he once told the magazine The Talks. "I'm really interested in that as a process because the process moves you in directions that you couldn't rationally put there."
