To tie in with the Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal exhibition, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi organizes a series of four appointments to go into the details of the artist’s work through the lens of different disciplinary fields: art history, physics, psychoanalysis and the psychology of perception. The meetings will provide an exploration into Kapoor’s artistic career, from his first exhibitions in England to his international success; learn about his experimentation with materials capable of generating perceptive impasses; delve into the symbolic, cultural and political value of certain recurrent colors in his research; and immerse oneself in the generative force of the unconscious that constantly returns in the artist’s work.
In a recently published essay, Anish Kapoor has been named “Mr. In-between,” the one who manages to keep himself balanced between apparently incompatible polarities. Through his work, Kapoor has expanded the boundaries of sculpture and painting, constantly experimenting with different materials and formats, from the most intimate dimensions to huge public installations. Kapoor’s artworks have the ability to relate opposites, in an eternal dichotomy where carnality and abstraction, surface and depth, concavity and convexity, male and female, spirituality and materiality, meet and coexist.
Calendar
Tuesday 5 December, 18.00
The Color of Emptiness
Giuseppe Di Napoli, Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan
Giuseppe Di Napoli teaches Visual Communication Project Methodology at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and was a lecturer in Perception Theory and Psychology of Form at the European Institute of Design in Milan until 2021. For Einaudi, he has published Draw and Know (2004); Painted Color (2006); Principles of Form (2011); In the Painter’s Eye (2016), and Leonardo: The Infinite Gaze (2019). He has authored numerous essays in art catalogs, magazines, and collective volumes, in addition to delivering multiple lectures in various museums and universities. He collaborates with the online magazine “doppiozero.”
Tuesday 19 December, 18.00
The Mirror and Its Reverse. Anish Kapoor and the Laws of Physics
Massimo Gurioli, University of Florence
A full professor of material physics at the University of Florence, he has extensive experience in various research topics related to light and optics, from photonics to quantum optics and spectroscopy. Since 2020, he has been the President of the Optical and Optometry Studies Course and has shifted his research activities to multiple fields of applied physics connected to the science of human vision, including outreach activities related to the connections and interconnections between science and art.
Tuesday 16 January, 18.00
Anish Kapoor and the New Horizons of Contemporary Sculpture
Lara Conte, Roma Tre University
A professor of Contemporary Art History at the Department of Philosophy, Communication, and Entertainment of Roma Tre University. Her research focuses on the study of art and criticism of the second half of the 20th century, with a focus on alternative narratives, transnational relationships, the new horizon of sculpture, performance, and the relationships between practices, criticism, and feminism. Among her publications are Material, Body, Action. Process Artistic Research between Europe and the United States. 1966-1970 (Electa, Milan 2010); Paolo Icaro. DoingUndoingRedoingSee (Mousse Publishing, Milan 2016); Gian Carozzi (Skira, Milan 2019); Italian Women Artists and Moving Images. Identities, Gazes, Experiments (with F. Gallo, Mimesis, Milan 2021), Sculpture in Action. Eliseo Mattiacci in Rome (Ridinghouse, London 2022).
Tuesday 30 January, 18.00
Under the Skin. A Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Reading of Anish Kapoor
Federico Leoni, University of Verona
Federico Leoni teaches philosophical anthropology at the University of Verona, where he co-directs, with Riccardo Panattoni, the “Tiresia” Research Center for philosophy and psychoanalysis. He writes for various scientific journals, “manifesto,” and “Doppiozero.” His latest books include Bergson: Signs of Life (Feltrinelli 2021); The Image-Box. Joseph Cornell, Masashi Echigo, Robin Meier (Castelvecchi 2022); Metaphysics of the Mirror. Anish Kapoor and the Poetry of Surfaces (Marsilio 2023).
The meetings will be held in the Strozzina’s conference room.
Free participation while places are available.
All conferences will be held in Italian.
Cover illustration: Anish Kapoor, Endless Column, 1992 © Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2023
