New video of Anish Kapoor's major 2019 exhibition in Beijing

16 June 2020

Last year, Anish Kapoor opened his first solo museum show in China, presented simultaneously across the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Art Museum and the Taimiao Museum of the Imperial Ancestral Temple in Beijing. This newly released video, produced by CAFA, includes an interview with Kapoor discussing the works on display at the Temple, focused on the artist’s uses of stainless steel and pure colour pigment in sculpture.

For Art Basel's 2020 online viewing room, Lisson Gallery's presentation – entitled 'Memories of Elsewhere' – will feature an iteration of the historic 1000 Names pigment series, previously presented in the side galleries of the Temple in Beijing. This work, comprising five individual objects, was created in 1981, harking back to the artist’s early rise to prominence and continuing commitment to the use of raw, pure paint pigment. The title, 1000 names refers to an infinite series alluding to the metamorphic ability of colour to have material presence and illusory resonance. On this series of works, Kapoor recalls, “I always go back to the pigment pieces. I always look at them again. When I was making them, I felt more alive than I perhaps ever had been in my life.”