Travel & Leisure

Colour and Size

Famed for his critically acclaimed Cloud Gate in Chicago and Sky Mirror in New York, Anish Kapoor is the fourth artist to be invited by the Grand Palais to create the annual Monumenta exhibition in its vast, glass-roofed Central nave. For Monumenta, Anish Kapoor wants to “drench the visitor with colour”, the viewer must be entirely involved in his artwork. For the viewer Anish Kapoor’s work holds a particular power of fascination. Simple forms, reflective surfaces and an immense scale – this great artist manages to tune in to a hitherto unexplored area of our minds.

“Leviathan”: an archaic force

The massive bulbous sculpture, made of rubber-like material, and designed to be entered by the visitors, fills almost the entirety of the Grand Palais’s nave. The viewer enters Anish Kapoor’s sculpture “Leviathan” via a blacked-out revolving door that leads into a womb-like cavity – warm, oppressive and bathed in red light, like being swallowed by a whale. The red glow is created by daylight flooding from the nave’s glass roof. The natural lightning also means that the interior temperature varies according to passing cloud cover. The seams in the balloon form lines that lead to a black hole in the centre of one orb that seem to create a pull-effect.

From the outside, however, Leviathan offers a completely different experience, a feeling of awe at the overwhelming scale of the bulbous, rubber-like installation, which stands 35m. high and fills the 35.000 m² of the nave.

So don’t miss this refined and hugely powerful-installation of Anish Kapoor that breathtakingly captures your attention. A unique exhibition which diffuses the taste for contemporary art and encourages its understanding and interpretation. The work is an event!