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Saturday 4 June 2011

INSPIRING SPACES: sculpture and setting...

Picture courtesy of the Grand Palais


I love to see sculpture in a 'proper' building, by which I mean something other than a white box of a gallery. It brings something to the room and something to the sculpture. If I had big money, I'd plonk huge sculptures all over my house and squeeze my life around them. 

Two striking examples of sculpture and setting have caught my eye in the last couple of days. Firstly, the purple-looking (actually red) PVC Leviathan by the ubiquitous Anish Kapoor at the Grand Palais in Paris. I like the way it fills the space and then some, looking like it's about to pop, Hulk-like, out of what is normally an imposing structure. It has a presence that reminds me of the 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith, as though it is humming with some incomprehensible power. Secondly, Jeff Koons' brightly coloured steel Tulips at the Fondazione Prada. It goes without saying that here it's all about the contrast between this shiny Pop piece and the decaying splendour of a Venetian palazzo. 


Picture courtesy of Christian Jungeblodt for The Guardian
Sorry about the quality, I had to resort to photographing
my newspaper when I failed to find this image online