Chicago Illinois - The
Cloud Gate Sculpture at Millennium Park: "The Bean"
Cloud
Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work
installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture
is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless
steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the
clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the
concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to
touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back
from a variety of perspectives.
Immediately upon its
unveiling, Chicagoans dubbed it "The Bean" and the official name
was relegated to relative obscurity.
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Inspired by liquid mercury, the
sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet
long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the (corporate name) Plaza, which
was made possible by a gift from (corporate name). "What I wanted to do in
Millennium Park is make something that would engage the Chicago skyline…so
that one will see the clouds kind of floating in, with those very tall
buildings reflected in the work. And then, since it is in the form of a
gate, the participant, the viewer, will be able to enter into this very deep
chamber that does, in a way, the same thing to one's reflection as the
exterior of the piece is doing to the reflection of the city around." -Anish
Kapoor
Anish Kapoor is renowned for his
enigmatic sculptural forms that permeate physical and psychological space.
Kapoor's inventiveness and versatility have resulted in works ranging from
powdered pigment sculptures and site-specific interventions on wall or
floor, to gigantic installations both in and outdoors. Throughout, he has
explored what he sees as deep-rooted metaphysical polarities: presence and
absence, being and non-being, place and non-place and the solid and the
intangible. Kapoor was born in Bombay in 1954, and has lived in London since
the early 1970s where he began his distinguished career as a student at
Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art Design. Over the last 20
years, Kapoor has emerged as one of the most prolific and respected
sculptors in the world. |
| This sculpture is amazing. I'm
not a writer in any sense of the word, so I'll just say - you HAVE to go
downtown and see this thing. Take your camera and make a fool of
yourself. The Millennium Park is the best thing that's happened to
Chicago since the fire. |
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The internationally-acclaimed Anish
Kapoor has had solo exhibitions of his work in venues such as Kunsthalle
Basel, Tate Gallery and Hayward Gallery in London; Reina Sofia in Madrid
and CAPC in Bordeaux. He has also participated internationally in many
group shows at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, The Royal Academy and
Serpentine Gallery in London; Documenta IX in Kassel; Moderna Museet in
Stockholm; and, Jeu de Paume and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Public collections of Kapoor's works are on view at a broad range of
international cultural institutions, including the Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC (U.S.); the Museo d'Arte
Contemporanea in Prato (Italy); Musee St. Pierre, Lyon (France); and,
the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia).
Anish
Kapoor was awarded the "Premio Duemila" at the Venice Biennale in 1990,
the Turner Prize Award in 1991 and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship at
the London Institute in 1997 and a CBE in 2003. He is represented by the
Lisson Gallery, London, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York and Galleria
Massimo Minini, Italy |
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