Anish Kapoor, a British artist originally from Mumbai, India, is widely regarded as one of the most influential sculptors alive today. In 1973, he relocated to the United Kingdom to pursue his studies in art and has since been based in London, where he continues to maintain an active and prolific artistic practice.
Kapoor’s early works in the late 1970s and early 1980s were characterized by the use of vivid pigment powders in saturated primary colors. From the 1980s onward, his artistic inquiry expanded into sculptural explorations of dualities such as sky and earth, light and darkness, matter and spirit, and consciousness and the subconscious. Deeply influenced by Carl Jung’s psychological theories during his student years, Kapoor experienced a personal rediscovery of Hindu philosophy during a return visit to India in 1979. This encounter significantly shaped his practice, infusing it with an Eastern sensibility and philosophical depth.
Drawing on these influences, Kapoor has consistently challenged conventional boundaries in sculpture, expanding the discourse of contemporary art. His works often embody contrasts between coexisting elements of presence and absence, fullness and emptiness, the visible and the invisible, two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality. On this basis he raises metaphysical questions about being and non-being, yin and yang, mind and the senses, and the cyclical nature of birth and death.
Kapoor has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Premio Duemila (Best Young Artist Award) at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990, followed by the prestigious Turner Prize in the United Kingdom in 1991. He has exhibited at some of the world’s most renowned venues, including the Palace of Versailles in France, and has held more than 80 solo exhibitions across the globe.
Sky Mirror is one of the most emblematic works in Anish Kapoor’s series of so-called "non-objects," composed of highly polished stainless steel. As a concave disc, the sculpture functions as a reflective surface that captures and frames the sky, presenting it as though it is held within a vessel. Rather than asserting its presence as an autonomous object, the work engages in a dynamic interaction with its surrounding environment, generating a new spatial experience. This interplay between object and space is a defining feature of Kapoor’s practice.
As viewers gaze upon the boundless sky reflected in the mirror, the heavy materiality of stainless steel recedes from perception, and the sculpture's physical substance appears to dissolve. In this moment, the viewer encounters not the material itself, but the phenomenon it evokes—where material and immaterial coalesce into a mysterious visual and conceptual experience.
Like Sky Mirror, which fuses substantial matter with the immaterial to produce a sense of transcendence, Kapoor’s large-scale installations often employ robust materials to explore metaphysical and phenomenological dimensions. His work invites the viewer into an encounter with the sublime, where sculptural form becomes a conduit for a metaphysical, almost spiritual engagement with space, perception, and being.