London-based artist
Anish Kapoor, who recently won the job of designing a £19m sculpture for the Olympic Park for London 2012, has been wowing audiences across the world with work such as the 110-ton stainless steel
Cloud Gate and the six-metre-wide concave steel dish
Sky Mirror.
As you can tell from Cloud Gate and Sky Mirror alone, Kapoor likes to work with large-scale reflective surfaces that impress viewers with sheer simplicity of form. These reflective surfaces distort the world, challenging onlookers to see their surroundings from a new perspective.
So with this in mind, it may not come as too much of a surprise that his latest installation, to be found dotted around
Kensington Gardens, is called
Turning the World Upside Down.
Kensington Gardens is beautiful enough – but with Kapoor's collection of stainless steel sculptures spread about the place, it just got a whole lot prettier.
Each of the four sculptures – C-Curve; Non-Object (Spire); Sky Mirror, Red; and Sky Mirror – change your perception of the world in different and unexpected ways. From afar you'll see something that alters as you move closer, and the changing weather and seasons present yet another picture.
Enjoyment can also be had from watching others as they engage with a distorted version of themselves and the scenery around them. And look out for the dogs who for years have enjoyed their daily walkies without ever having been confronted by mirrored modern art such as this. Whatever will
they make of it when they peer into it and see something familiar albeit upside down looking back?
The installation runs until March 2011, is open daily from 6am till dusk, and is free to all.
