Anish Kapoor Sculpture
General information
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Location address
Tate Modern, Southwark, London
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Location country
United Kingdom
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Year of construction
2002
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Name of the client/building owner
Anish Kapoor and Tate Modern
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Function of building
Exhibition
Description
Marsyas, Anish Kapoor’s sculpture for the Turbine Hall, comprises three steel rings joined together by a single span of PVC membrane. Two are positioned vertically, at each end of the space, while a third is suspended parallel with the bridge. Seemingly wedged into place, the geometry generated by these three rigid steel structures determines the sculpture’s overall form, a shift from vertical to horizontal and back to vertical again.
Kapoor began the project in January 2002, soon realising that the only way he could challenge the daunting height of the Turbine Hall was, paradoxically, to use its length. He approached the space as a rectangular box with a shelf (the bridge) in the middle of it, and over many months, explored its potential through a series of drawings and sculptural maquettes. Human scale and the relationship of the viewer to the work was central to his thinking.
The PVC membrane has a fleshy quality, which Kapoor describes as being ‘rather like a flayed skin'. The title refers to Marsyas, a satyr in Greek mythology, who was flayed alive by the god Apollo. The sculpture’s dark red colour suggests something ‘of the physical, of the earthly, of the bodily.’ Kapoor has commented, ‘I want to make body into sky'. Marsyas confounds spatial perception, immersing the viewer in a monochromatic field of colour. It is impossible to view the entire sculpture from any one position. Instead we experience it as a series of discrete encounters, in which we are left to construct the whole.
Fabric sculpture spans 135m between supports. Surface area of 3500m2 and was fabricated into a single piece. The surface curvatures required by the artist were much more extreme than conventional membrane constructions.
Description of the environmental conditions
Material of the cover
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Cable-net/Fabric/Hybrid/Foil
Fabric
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Type (code)
II
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Material Fabric/Foil
Polyester
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Material coating
PVC
Main dimensions and form
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Covered surface (m2)
3500
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Maximum height (m)
28
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Total length (m)
135
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Total width (m)
28
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Form entire structure
Anticlastic
Duration of use
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Temporary or permanent structure
Temporary
Involved companies
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Architects
Anish Kapoor (artist)
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Engineers
Arup
Tensys
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Contractors
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Suppliers
SERGE FERRARI
Editor
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Editor
Brian Forster
