Past Present Future, Part II

PAST PRESENT FUTURE (2006) ANISH KAPOOR

The first thing you notice in Kapoor World is the smell of the Planet Saturn. Yes, yes, you heard me right: that sixth planet from the sun, second largest in the solar system, with an equatorial diameter of 74,130 miles (thank you, solarviews.com).

It appears to have collided with the front of the museum and penetrated through the upper floors to come to rest, lodge, and/or protrude from the white walls of this light filled gallery (larger and better lit than the one pictured here).

O, wait. It’s red. Mars is red, right? But Kapoor’s Saturn (actually titled, Past Present Future) is red from wax–pounds and pounds and pounds of wax, (which accounts for the aroma upon entering the gallery) not planet soil rich with iron oxide. This red is not yellowish like the hydrogen from the real Saturn.

But, make no mistake, the sculptor is a red guy, so in Kapoor World, Saturn has got to be red. He is not concerned with objects being beautiful, he says. “The world has enough of luxury goods”. And what good is it, I say, being an artist if you can’t make your planet the color that you like?

Why red?

Because red has a “very powerful blackness” he told the curator of the museum.

So, red is black? No, silly.

“Red is an open and beckoning color but it also associates itself with the dark interior world, and that is what interests me.”

Oh. Darkness. That absence of light thingy that we carry around within us, you mean? That little thing that makes us think there are monsters under our bed when we are three? Yes, where terror resides he says. Do you mean that Kapoor knows that no matter my jaunty waves at human planet big deals or blue suits and strands of pearls, that I struggle with darkness, my own resident terrors?

O, yes, Dorothy. We are not in Kansas anymore my dear. In fact, we’re no longer in Boston, either. If you don’t bring your terrors (as if I could just leave them home), Kapoor world will not let you in. The visitor completes his art with their own darkness, their own shadowy holes.

Okay. It’s about here right at the start of the exhibit that my stomach sort of twists. I’m feeling something and it’s not good but maybe it’s joy, I can’t be sure.

I think proximity to this planet has created a gravity pull. I am drawn to check out the white mechanical arm that arcs over the planet of wax. Wait one damn minute here.

It’s moving. Slowly. I mean slowly. But, it’s moving. There’s a track there and it’s moving through it, red wax dripping on to the track like blood and splattered like a scene from TV’s “CSI” off to each side. Its slow march is shaping the planet Saturn at the same time it is rotating around it.

Ok. Ok. Ok. Calm down. Do you mean this is creating itself as I look at it? Slowly creating itself, creating me, even? But no, I really mean it: creating so slowly, almost as slowly as living 63 years, that it’s 48 hours since I’ve been to the exhibit and I’m not sure it’s even completed one full sweep of the diameter.

So the rings of Saturn are actually a sculptor’s bloody hand? Yes.

So the rings of Saturn are sculpting my dark interior spaces right before my very eyes? Yes. (No wonder I feel a bit queasy)

So, the rings of Saturn are scraping my current exterior to reveal my interior, whatever depths I have, as I stand slack jawed in front of it?

Yes. Yes. And, Yes. My knees begin to tremor every so slightly, a 3.4 on the Richter scale. This is only the first piece of this exhibit. What else does he know about my past? My present? Who shall I be at the end of it?

It is both terror and joy that I feel. I am not yet finished his work tells me. I am not the sum of my fears or my joys. I am still becoming.

This is what art can do in the soft hands of a magician.

©2008 Pat Coakley

PHOTOGRAPH IS FROM THE EXHIBIT BOOK, PAST PRESENT FUTURE.