Anish Kapoor’s Descension at Brooklyn Bridge Park

Anish Kapoor was born in 1954 in Mumbai, India. He lives in London, where he moved in the early 1970s to attend art school. For more than 35 years, Kapoor has been among the most inventive and influential artists of his generation. He has created compelling and poetic bodies of work using a range of materials that include raw pigment, stone, stainless steel, synthetic polymer, resin, and wax. He also has a longstanding interest in the sculptural potential of water. Descension, presented for the first time in the United States, represents a breakthrough with this inherently challenging, slippery substance.

Like all of Kapoor’s works, Descension is the result of intensive research into material and process, exploring the potential of water to behave in surprising ways. The continuous swirling motion of this 26-foot-diameter liquid mass converges in a central vortex, as if rushing water is being sucked into the earth’s depths. We thus experience Kapoor’s abstract form on multiple levels. Its powerful physicality has a visceral and mesmerizing impact. Yet Descension also stimulates the imagination and suggests a social, cultural, and even mythic dimension.

This exhibition is curated by Public Art Fund Director and Chief Curator Nicholas Baume.