Void Field

Anish Kapoor

Mumbai, India, 1954
  • Date: 
    1989
  • Material: 
    Cumbrian sandstone and pigment
  • Technique: 
    Carving
  • Descriptive technique: 
    A sculpture series made up of six stone blocks, the outside of which is exactly how they were extracted from a quarry, perforated by the artist on the upper part
  • Dimensions: 
    Various measurements
  • Category: 
    Sculpture
  • Entry date: 
    1991
  • Register number: 
    AD00002

Void Field is part of the group of works that Anish Kapoor exhibited in the British Pavilion at the 1990 Venice Biennale. The idea of the void runs through much of Kapoor’s work, as does the use of pigment, without its application being visible, and a marked interest in transforming a work of art into a reflection on its location, articulating the space as a concept inextricably linked to the void. As the artist says: “Void is really a state within. […] I find myself coming back to the idea of narrative without storytelling, to that which allows one to bring in psychology, fear, death and love in as direct a way as possible. This void is not something which is of no utterance. It is a potential space, not a non-space.” Void Field consists of large blocks of sandstone with a hole in the upper side filled with black pigment. The work attempts to create a tension between the voluminous mass and the void contained in each of the heavy blocks, between presence and absence, between the concrete and the unspecific. So the work transcends the limits of Minimalism, on the one hand maintaining the artist’s expressive absence, while on the other delving deeper into the dualities of meaning that lend the work its ability to contain elements of psychology, of thought or of complex cultural references.

Carmen Fernández Aparicio

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