anish kapoor brings blood red and vantablack to venice art biennale 2022

step inside the visceral world of Anish Kapoor

The Venice Art Biennale 2022 has officially opened and one show not to miss is Anish Kapoor‘s all-consuming takeover of Gallerie dell’Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin. The two part exhibition, named Anish Kapoor in Venice, combines retrospective elements with never before seen pieces, and messy blood red installations with precise Vantablack sculptures. The extensive solo show includes around 60 works in total and it is the first time a British artist has been honored with a major exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia. It also celebrates the Anish Kapoor Foundation’s recent acquisition of the 18th century Palazzo Manfrin, which had sat empty for many years.

‘It’s a huge honour to be invited to engage with the collections at the Gallerie dell’ Accademia in Venice, perhaps one of the finest collections of classical painting anywhere in the world,’ says Kapoor. ‘All art must engage with what went before. The Accademia presents a wonderful and wondrous challenge. I feel a deep commitment to Venice, its architecture and its support for the contemporary arts.’

Anish Kapoor, Shooting into the Corner, 2008-2009, image © David Levene

Anish Kapoor, Shooting into the Corner, 2008-2009, image © designboom

Anish Kapoor in Venice takes viewers on a journey through key moments in the artist’s career set against the historic architecture of Gallerie dell’Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin. The absorbing scale and often visceral nature of Kapoor’s works distends the gallery spaces into new realms. Works on view inside the Gallerie dell’Accademia include crimson red wax shot from a canon in Shooting into the Corner (2008–2009) and the engorged Pregnant White Within Me (2022).

Anish Kapoor, Pregnant White Within Me, 2022, image © David Levene

Anish Kapoor, Pregnant White Within Me, 2022, image © designboom

At the entrance to Palazzo Manfrin, visitors will find the pendulous mass of Kapoor’s Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto (2022) in dialogue with the classical columns. Once inside, a series of rooms features works from throughout the artist’s career such as the fleshy painting triptych Internal Objects in Three Parts (2013– 2015), as well as the vividly colored mounds of White Sand Red Millet Many Flowers (1982).

Heaven, hell, earth and sea are invoked in works such as Turning Water Into Mirror, Blood into Sky (2003) and Destierro (2017) while overt references to vulvas and vaginas permeate throughout a lot of the pieces including Split In Two Like a Fish For Frying (2022). Meanwhile, the central installation Symphony for a Beloved Sun (2013) submerges the historic venue in the primal color and the stuff of life and death.

Anish Kapoor, Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto, 2022, image © David Levene

Anish Kapoor, Destierro, 2017, image © David Levene

The exhibition is curated by art historian Taco Dibbits, General Director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. ‘Kapoor creates works that are happening as we experience them,’ comments Dibbits. ‘Throughout all of the spaces of this exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin, there is process and temporality on display and in action. These works exist in a continuous state of becoming, we are invited to witness these objects at just one moment in the process of their generation or de-generation.’

Giulio Manieri Elia, the Accademia’s Director, adds ‘Anish Kapoor has built his whole oeuvre on investigating the absolute essence of art in its constituent inner elements: form, pigment, perspective, light and its absence, facilitating in this creative investigation a stimulating dialogue with the art ofthe great Venetian Renaissance masters represented in the museum: Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese.’

Anish Kapoor, Portrait of Pink triptych, 2019, image © Attilio Maranzano

Anish Kapoor, Split In Two Like a Fish For Frying, 2022, image © David Levene

Anish Kapoor in Venice has been organized in collaboration with Anish Kapoor Studio and Lisson Gallery with support from Galleria Continua, Galleria Massimo Minini, Galerie Kamel Mennour, Kukje Gallery, Regen Projects and SCAI The Bathhouse. Supported by LG OLED.

The catalogue is published by Marsilio Arte – which also organizes and promotes the exhibition – with essays by Gil Andijar, Homi K. Bhabha, Linda Borean, Giuseppe Civitarese, Mario Codognato, Waldemar Januszczak, Norman Rosenthal, Carlo Rovelli and Michele Tavola.

portrait © George Darrell