Anish Kapoor at the RA
Dec. 4th, 2009 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_clangerI took advantage of my very flexible working arrangements to bunk off for a couple of hours this afternoon (and then stay at work a bit later) to pop over to Piccadilly and the RA to see the Anish Kapoor exhibition. I had some sort of odd idea that it might be quiet around about 3; instead, I spent 40 minutes in the freezing cold queuing across Burlington House quad. And when I finally got to the till the payment system had crashed; in a rare moment of the universe taking pity on me, the woman behind the till then declared that I'd have to pay cash but as for some odd reason they only had student tickets on cash sale I need pay only £8 instead of £12.
Once inside the exhibition confirmed my impression of Kapoor from previous works of his I've seen, viz. he is mad, but my sort of mad. Once room is full of huge polished curving mirrors, like a far superior version of those ones at the funfair that make you all wobbly. The thing about these ones, other than their size, was that they were made of very highly polished metal with, unlike a normal mirror, no glass in front. Now with a back-silvered mirror you can always see to some extent the glass and it puts a window pane between you and the reflection. Here, that wasn't the case, making the reflected image seem much more real. Given that it was also slightly distorted - a little stockier or taller than normal - the effect was oddly disturbing. There was another Simon in front of me, but not quite right.
The weird, massive concrete worm casts were impressive although to be honest they lost a little something by having so many of them; to me it seemed that you couldn't help rating some as rather less good than others. But some were very good indeed, and you could picture yourself as faced with the detritus of some odd alien creature. The massive sliding block of red wax worked through sheer scale, whilst the much-vaunted wax cannon was amusing but a bit anticlimactic.
The exhibition is on for another week, but from today's experience I'd suggest booking online rather than queuing for tickets.
(Image links from Guardian / RA)
Once inside the exhibition confirmed my impression of Kapoor from previous works of his I've seen, viz. he is mad, but my sort of mad. Once room is full of huge polished curving mirrors, like a far superior version of those ones at the funfair that make you all wobbly. The thing about these ones, other than their size, was that they were made of very highly polished metal with, unlike a normal mirror, no glass in front. Now with a back-silvered mirror you can always see to some extent the glass and it puts a window pane between you and the reflection. Here, that wasn't the case, making the reflected image seem much more real. Given that it was also slightly distorted - a little stockier or taller than normal - the effect was oddly disturbing. There was another Simon in front of me, but not quite right.
The weird, massive concrete worm casts were impressive although to be honest they lost a little something by having so many of them; to me it seemed that you couldn't help rating some as rather less good than others. But some were very good indeed, and you could picture yourself as faced with the detritus of some odd alien creature. The massive sliding block of red wax worked through sheer scale, whilst the much-vaunted wax cannon was amusing but a bit anticlimactic.
The exhibition is on for another week, but from today's experience I'd suggest booking online rather than queuing for tickets.
(Image links from Guardian / RA)
