Anish Kapoors Leviathan at Monumenta in Paris isnt just audacious in size; it is poetic and contemplative too,making it the most talked about piece of currently exhibited art. Maseeh Rahman in Paris Since 2007,Frances Culture Ministry has been inviting a single artist to create a monumental work that would appeal to the widest possible audiences. It was Anish Kapoors turn this year. And judging by the snaking queues outside the Grand Palais in Paris where Kapoors gargantuan Leviathan is on view until June 23,the Mumbai-born British sculptor has more than fulfilled his commission. The concept behind Monumenta,as the annual exhibition is nothing if not audacious. An internationally-renowned artist is asked to produce a work that can fill the cavernous 13,500 sq metre hall of the palatial structure on Champs Elysees which has the largest glass roof in Europe. The artist is forced to imagine on an epic scale. Even for a sculptor like Kapoor,who has done a few outsized projects in recent years and is currently busy creating a giant steel tower for the 2012 London Olympics,the dimensions of the Grand Palais exhibition space would have been daunting. Perhaps the challenge of this building allowed a certain kind of awakening, Kapoor acknowledged. I feel like Ive been working on this for,certainly,the last 20 years. The Leviathan consists of three huge inflatable spheres linked to a central chamber made from a translucent yet extremely tough synthetic fabric which appears a deep burgundy from outside but a glowing,ethereal red from within. The experience of the work has been compared to walking into the belly of the whale as you pass through airlocked doors into its inflated interior. Kapoor has said that his ambition is to immerse viewers in colour,and it will,I hope,be a contemplative and poetic experience. My immediate impression on entering the red haze of the Leviathans interior was as if I had walked into the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovskys meditative sci-fi thriller Solaris. On a sunny summer day,the shadows from the steel girders of the glass roof created intricate patterns on the red spheres,and the space appeared to float in three different directions into a kind of unknowable distance. Kapoor has also described the work as a big beast that is inarticulate,yet has great beauty. But the sense of having glimpsed something unfathomable yet strangely tranquil gets dissipated as one enters the huge,brightly-lit Grand Palais hall to view the work from outside. Now the Leviathan evokes a different response,a sense of awe at the sheer scale of the enterprise,and the technical skills that would have gone into designing,manufacturing and inflating such a mammoth object. Ultimately though,as the ArtInfo France editor-in-chief Nicolai Hartvig put it cuttingly,wherever you go (in the Grand Palais hall),Leviathan remains a big balloon. Yet theres no denying that Kapoors Leviathan is the most talked-about show in Paris,as the crowds come to gaze and marvel at this wondrous creature.
