Anish Kapoor Untrue Unreal

From 7 October 2023 until 4 February 2024, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi presents Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal, a major exhibition devised and produced with the celebrated artist who has revolutionised the notion of sculpture in contemporary art. Curated by Arturo Galansino, Director General of Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the show will feature monumental installations, intimate environments and thought-provoking forms that will forge an original and captivating dialogue between the art of Anish Kapoor and the architecture and audience of Palazzo Strozzi.

With a wide range of early, mid-career and recent works, including a new architecturally scaled work especially conceived for the Renaissance courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, the exhibition offers an opportunity to engage directly with the artist’s oeuvre in all its versatility, discord, entropy and ephemerality. Palazzo Strozzi becomes a venue at once concave and convex, whole and yet fragmented, in which visitors are called on to question their senses.

In Anish Kapoor’s art, the unreal merges with the untrue, transforming or negating the common perception of reality. He invites us to explore a world where the boundaries between what is true and false dissolve, opening the doors to the realm of the impossible. One of the distinguishing features is the way Kapoor’s works transcend their materiality. Kapoor’s works merge empty and full space, absorbing and reflecting surface, geometrical and biomorphic form. In a world where reality seems increasingly elusive and manipulable, Anish Kapoor challenges us to seek truth beyond appearances, inviting us to explore the territory of the untrue and the unreal.

The exhibition is promoted and organized by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. Main Supporter: Fondazione CR Firenze. Main Partner: Intesa Sanpaolo. Supporters: Comune di Firenze, Regione Toscana, Camera di Commercio di Firenze, Comitato dei Partner di Palazzo Strozzi. With the contribution of Città Metropolitana di Firenze. With the support of Maria Manetti Shrem and Fondazione Hillary Merkus Recordati. Thanks to Galleria Continua.
The exhibition is part of the Florence Art Week, an initiative promoted by the City of Florence and scheduled from 28 September to 8 October 2023.

Anish Kapoor

Born in Mumbai, India in 1954, Anish Kapoor has lived and worked in London since studying sculpture at Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea College of Art in the mid-seventies. More recently dividing his time between studios in London and Venice.

His works are permanently exhibited in the most important collections and museums around the world from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Tate in London; the Prada Foundation in Milan and the Guggenheim Museums in Venice, Bilbao and Abu Dhabi. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Galleria dell’Accademia di Venezia & Palazzo Manfrin, Venice, Italy (2022); Modern Art Oxford, UK (2021); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK (2020); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2020); Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum and Imperial Ancestral Tempie, Beijing (2019); Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires (2019); Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Porto, Portugal (2018); University Museum of  Contemporary Art (MUAC), Mexico City (2016); Chateau de Versailles, France (2015); Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow, (2015); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2013); Sakip Sabanci Muzesi, Istanbul (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2012).

Anish Kapoor represented Great Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 where he was awarded the Premio Duemila Prize. In 1991 he won the Turner Prize and has gone on to receive numerous international awards and honours.

Also renowned for his architecturally scaled works, public projects include: Cloud Gate (2004), Millennium Park, Chicago, USA; Leviathan (2011) exhibited at Monumenta, Paris, France; Orbit (2012), Oueen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London; Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall created for Lucerne Festival, Japan (2013); Descension (2014) most recently installed in Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, USA (2017) and the soon to be completed Traiano and Universitá Monte St Angelo Metro Stations, Naples, Italy (2002–2023).

Cover: Anish Kapoor, Svayambhu, 2007 Photo: Dave Morgan. © Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2023