#798 - chasing tim, i find anish kapoor

this was otherworldly.

we went into gallery continua in the 798, just randomly. there was a corridor to the left in the reception area, a non-descript entry to a curving hall. we started down it. it kept going. and turning, and turning and getting dimmer and dimmer.

we started to laugh, and then run, chasing each other down this constantly curving corridor, until, like daybreak, light, and suddenly . . .


we broke from the hall into a circular chamber, and were facing . . .

a cyclone.


a continuous, swirling, tight vapor stream, pouring down from a vent in the middle of a round room, twisting and turning, serpentine and ephemeral . . . it broke my heart and made the poet in me want to wrestle it to the ground. the floor beneath it was damp from contact, but there was no sign of it being touched.


mesmerized. immobile. us, not the art.


it was an installation by anish kapoor, a man whose work stuns me every time i see it. from cloud gate in chicago, to this, he finds a way to force the beauty of the material world into a strange, startling perspective, to beg contact from the viewer, to demand you stop, and feel the world.

from that room, which i didn't want to leave, we found levels of his work, mainly because tim kept moving, moving, moving . . .



from paintings made with pigment and forced smoke:


to carved alabaster pieces meant to almost constrain the light around them:




to video installs that recalled wounds:


to giant bubbles that seemed to be merely residing temporarily on walls, until moving on:



get thee to galleria continua. bear witness.