Sculptor Anish Kapoor's Endless Black Whirlpool in India Will Hypnotize You

The black water vortex is the sculptor's first site-specific installation in his home country.

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As a part of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India, sculptor Anish Kapoor designed and built his first-ever site specific work in his home country: a black water whirlpool in the floor of the Aspinwall House. Titled Descension, the installation features a metal gate around a hole in the gallery floor, in which an eerie and mesmerizing vortex spins continuously. The work is 10 feet wide, and according to Designboom, has been a major attraction at the 108-day long biennale.

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"If one's talking about sculpture, then scale is almost everything...scale and skin," said Anish Kapoor in an interview for the biennale (below). "I would say the skin of an object is what defines it. Its weight and mass is contingent on its skin. But scale, of course, is much more mysterious."

The scale of this installation is much smaller than some of Kapoor's previous works, including the giant inflatable Ark Nova concert hall he created in collaboration with Japanese architect Arata Isozaki or the Cloud Gate sculpture that sits in Chicago's Millenium Park, but the process of building it was still very laborious, as shown in the short video below.

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View this video on YouTube

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View this video on YouTube

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The Kochi-Muziris Biennale runs through March 29, so if you're planning to be in or around Kochi, India you should definitely see this work (and the many others) in person.

[via Creator's Project]

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