Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi Highlights Anish Kapoor’s Elusive Art
This was likely the most anticipated contemporary art event of the season. Thursday 5 October saw the opening of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”, a major exhibition devoted to the work of the Indian-born British sculptor. Housed within the magnificent Renaissance architecture of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, the exhibit invites us to plunge into Anish Kapoor’s poetic universe – a realm where versatility and discordance, entropy and ephemerality, the unreal and the unlikely, find a harmonious balance. To host the exhibition, curated by Arturo Galansino, the Palazzo Strozzi has been transformed into a space that is both concave and convex, whole and fragmented. This peculiar setting calls for an active engagement of the spectator, who is challenged to question their own senses. “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal” features some of the most important works of the artist’s career: sculptures that merge empty and full space, and monumental installations blending absorbing and reflecting surfaces with geometric and biomorphic forms. Standing among the pieces one feels enveloped by a world where reality appears increasingly elusive, and appearances prove to be deceptive. The exhibition opening drew key figures from the artistic and cultural fields, alongside Kapoor, who was present with his wife Oumaima Boumoussaoui, and Galansino, general director of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. Among the personalities in attendance, we met Maria Manetti Shrem, Christian Levett, Amanda Platek, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Giuseppe Morbidelli, Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi, Michele Coppola, Eva Maria Düringer Cavalli and the mayor of Florence, Dario Nardel, to name but a few.
Text: Germano D’Acquisto
Photos: Ludovica Arcero
