Anish Kapoor’s largest North American Exhibition to open at Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2024

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Bank of America announced as the Presenting Sponsor for the Twin Cities Market

MINNEAPOLIS—(March 27, 2024) —This fall, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) will present “Anish Kapoor: Reverie and Rupture,” the largest exploration in North America of the artist’s practice to date. Featuring works from the 1970s to the present, the exhibition surveys the material and philosophical strategies that have inspired the extensive creative output of the groundbreaking artist, transporting viewers to the limits of personal perception. Installed across Mia’s campus and six dedicated galleries with a total of more than 12,000 square feet, the exhibition will include more than forty works, demonstrating the artist’s extraordinary range: monumental sculptures in PVC, stone, stainless steel, and wax; delicate and illusionistic pigment works; sculptures created with nanotechnology that confound our perception of reality; recent paintings that highlight a sustaining aspect of his work; and site-specific architectural interventions that present his unique exploration of space and object. Following the premiere at Mia, from September 29, 2024 to January 5, 2025, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in summer 2025 and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, in fall 2025.

“For over four decades, Anish Kapoor has shaped a world with works that are replete with inherent paradox–eliding easy categorization while expanding the territory of global abstraction,” said Pujan Gandhi, Mia’s Jane Emison Assistant Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art, who organized the exhibition in close collaboration with the artist. “By conception, Kapoor’s objects—or ‘non-objects’ which belie their own materiality—encourage the active participation of the viewer, engendering sensations ranging from a sublime and blissful state of disbelief to gut-churning apprehensions of one’s physicality. By playing with mythologies both ancient and modern, Kapoor’s practice invites us to conjure fundamental questions, as we too find ourselves both negating and affirming what we know and seek to know. Reverie and Rupture will offer North American audiences a broader and deeper understanding of Kapoor’s iconic work, affirming the vital role of art in our lives and in our world.”

The public experience of the show will begin outside of the exhibition galleries, as several of Kapoor’s monumental works are installed in spaces around the museum. These works will introduce audiences to recurring themes in Kapoor’s practice: perception and reality, love and fear, self and universe, male and female, creation and destruction, all with an underlying sense of mystery. For example, suspended in the museum’s barrel-vaulted atrium will be At the Edge of the World (1998), which invites viewers beneath a massive hemispherical dome of deeply colored pigment. The work, evocative of the South Asian architectural concept of the “womb embryo,” may initially appear fixed but as viewers stand underneath and look up, it slowly gives way to a sense of limitlessness.

Within the galleries, visitors will explore the progression and interrelated nature of Kapoor’s work, including:

  • Kapoor’s seminal pigment works, which began with the series titled 1000 Names (1979-80), are suggestive of both architectural and organic forms. His use of color as a sculptural material in its own right was an epochal moment in his work and its evolution of a language that contains both presence and absence, form and formlessness. The works in this vein include forms in red pigment—a color with potent symbolism, and one capable of absorbing the highest energy and wavelengths visible to the human eye—as well as the void triptych Three (1990), composed of deep blue pigment, a color that engages the lowest and shortest wavelengths, in contrast to red.
  • The artist’s mirror sculptures, begun in the mid-1990s, include the work Non-Object (Door) (2008). These works, which engage viewers with their mirrored voids, create “non-objects” and offer a dynamic interaction as they reflect, distort, and transform their surroundings. Beyond the visual, many of Kapoor’s mirror works also surprise with their acoustic properties, adding a sonic dimension to their physical distortions of space and perception.
  • In contrast to the highly polished and immaculate nature of Kapoor’s mirrored works, the visceral and entropic work Svayambhu (2007) consists of a massive block of red wax that slowly moves through the galleries, blurring the lines between painting and sculpture. The work’s name means “self-generated” in Sanskrit, and it appears as though the work is creating itself as it passes through the portals between galleries.
  • Kapoor’s most recent series, the Non-Object Black works, are made using Vantablack, a ground-breaking nanotechnology material that has extended the artist’s practice into radical new territory. Developed by the artist in collaboration with Surrey NanoSystems, Vantablack is a microscopic layer of nano-rods so dense that no light that enters can escape—and which ultimately absorbs 99.8% of visible light, akin to a black hole. Working with this material, the shapes and forms of the Non-Object Black works both appear and disappear before the viewer’s eyes.
  • And a selection of Kapoor’s critically important yet lesser-known paintings, shown here for the first time in a U.S museum. Painting has always been an integral part of the artist’s practice, and with energetic brushwork the artist’s hand is intimately present, in contrast to his seemingly “un-made” sculptural works of gleaming perfection. For example, the painting The world trembles when I retrieve from my ancient past what I need to live in the depths of myself (2020), offers tremendous insight into the depths of Kapoor’s artistic imagination, as the viewer is confronted with the imagery of flayed flesh within a tumultuous and ritualistic landscape.

“Presenting this major retrospective of Anish Kapoor in an encyclopedic museum such as ours demonstrates the connections between ideas and concerns that have challenged artists for generations, across many cultures,” said Katie Luber, Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President of Mia. “Kapoor’s work engages with ideas about genesis and extinction, identity and universality, presence and absence, and he does so with breathtaking beauty. His groundbreaking contributions to art also reaffirm humanities’ critical role in fostering cross-cultural understanding and communal connection, which are likewise essential parts of our mission to engage audiences through presenting great art.”

Reverie and Rupture will be accompanied by a full-color catalogue featuring contributions by a diverse array of thinkers, including Homi Bhabha, Nancy Spector, Pepe Karmel, Zara Houshmand, and curator Pujan Gandhi.

Bank of America is the Twin Cities Presenting Sponsor of Reverie and Rupture.  The bank is one of Mia’s long-standing partners and has been involved with many projects, including recent funding for the conservation of Domenico Passignano’s Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise through the bank’s Art Conservation Project, as the Major Sponsor of Mia’s Family Day programming, Major Sponsor of the 2020-2021 exhibition “In the Presence of Our Ancestors: Southern Perspectives in African American Art,” and as Major Corporate Sponsor for the exhibit “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists” in 2019.

“At Bank of America, we believe that investments in arts and culture help to build communities and have a positive impact on the lives of our clients and employees,” said Lucas Giambelluca, president, Bank of America Twin Cities. “We are thrilled to be partnering with Mia again on this momentous exhibition and are looking forward to help bringing these extraordinary works to the Twin Cities.”

Current sponsors include:

Presenting Sponsor: Bank of America
24th Street Installation made possible by Pierson M. Grieve
Lead Sponsor: John and Nancy Lindahl
Major Sponsors: Noel and Cole Patterson, Susan and Rob White
Generous Sponsors: Ben Aguilar and Jerry Erickson, Maurice and Sally Blanks, Leela and Kevin Scattum, John Thomson, the National Endowment for the Arts
Additional Support Provided by: Beverly Fink, Elizabeth Andrus and Roby Thompson

 

Update

April 18, 2024—The special exhibition Anish Kapoor: Reverie and Rupture, previously scheduled for Fall 2024, has been postponed to provide Mia and the artist, Sir Anish Kapoor, additional time to achieve his vision. Given the size and scale of many of Kapoor’s works, the limitations of Mia’s historic building, and the technical complexities of some installations, this pause will ensure the best outcomes for the exhibition, the artist, Mia, and museum visitors.

“While it is unfortunate that we need to delay our presentation of Reverie and Rupture, I am so grateful to Anish Kapoor and his studio for working with Mia to bring his vision to fruition. We look forward to continuing our work together to share this ambitious exhibition with our audiences,” said Katie Luber.

Anish Kapoor stated, “I am grateful to the team at Mia for their continued dedication to the goals and vision of the show. This pause will help to ensure that we make an exhibition that is right for the work and the space of the museum .”

New exhibition dates will be announced as soon as possible.

 

About Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor was born in Mumbai in 1954. He studied sculpture at Hornsey College of Art, London (1973–77), followed by postgraduate studies at Chelsea School of Art, London (1977–78). Kapoor represented Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 where he was awarded the Premio Duemila and won the Turner Prize in 1991.

His works are permanently exhibited in the most important collections and museums around the world including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA; Tate, London, England, UK; Prada Foundation, Milan and the Guggenheim Museums in Venice, Bilbao and Abu Dhabi. Recent solo exhibitions include: ARKEN, Denmark (2024); Matarazzo, São Paolo, Brazil (2024); Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy (2023); Centre of Polish Sculpture, Orońsko, Poland (2022); Gallerie dell’Accademia & Palazzo Manfrin, Venice, Italy (2022); Modern Art Oxford, England, U.K (2021); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England, U.K (2020); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2020); Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum and Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing, China (2019); Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2019); Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2018); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico (2016); Château de Versailles, France (2015); Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow, Russia (2015); Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (2013); Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi, Istanbul, Turkey (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2012).

Also renowned for his architecturally scaled works, public projects include: Marsyas (2002), Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, England, UK; Cloud Gate (2004), Millennium Park, Chicago, IL,USA; Cloud Column (1998-2006), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, USA; Dismemberment Site I (2003-2009), The Farm, Kaipara Bay, New Zealand; Leviathan (2011), Monumenta, Paris, France; Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created for Lucerne Festival, Japan (2013); Descension (2014) most recently installed in Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, NY, USA (2017); Traiano and Universitá Monte St Angelo Metro Stations, Naples, Italy (2002–24) and the recently installed sculpture at 56 Leonard St, New York, NY, USA (2023)

Kapoor lives and works in London and Venice.

 

About Bank of America

Bank of America is one of the world’s leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 69 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 3,800 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs (automated teller machines) and award-winning digital banking with approximately 57 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 4 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BAC).

 

Press Contacts

Minneapolis Institute of Art
press@artsmia.org

PAVE Communications and Consulting
Sascha Freudenheim
sascha@paveconsult.com
+1 917 544 6057

Carmichael Lynch Relate for Mia
mia@clynch.com

 

About the Minneapolis Institute of Art

Home to more than 100,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) inspires wonder, spurs creativity, and nourishes the imagination. With extraordinary exhibitions and one of the finest art collections in the country—from all corners of the globe, and from ancient to contemporary—Mia links the past to the present, enables global conversations, and offers an exceptional setting for inspiration.

General admission to Mia is always free. Some special exhibitions have a nominal admission fee.

For more information, call + 1 612 870 3000 or visit artsmia.org