Anish Kapoor declared to the opening crowd of Kapoor in Berlin that this survey was his best show to date.1 Fans and critics alike lined up to scrutinise his lofty claim, keen to assess how the sculptures of the international heavy weight artist translated within the walls of the Neo-Renaissance-cum-white-box of the Martin-Gropius-Bau. Featuring roughly seventy works spanning over thirty years of practice, half were either new pieces or reinventions of older works. Kapoor insisted this was an intentional decision, taken to ensure that Kapoor In Berlin would not be viewed as a retrospective,2 and there is no doubt that Norman Rosenthal curated the exhibition to resist such an assumption. Kapoor in Berlin does not simply showcase the artist’s past accomplishments but also suggests new possibilities for interpreting his practice. The show was met with a mixed reception from the public, which may indicate that the future direction of Kapoor’s practice might be diverging from the expectations of his viewers.
Upon entering the main atrium of the Martin-Gropius-Bau, the viewer is met by the massive centerpiece commission Symphony for a Beloved Sun (2013). Three black conveyor belts protrude from separate corners of the atrium floor, slowly hoisting up large slabs of rich red wax. Once each brick reaches the apex it plummets to the ground, heaping in massive piles on the gallery floor, in an offering to the imposing, opaque red sun disk suspended overhead. Kapoor’s references to both art history and the location itself are legible and cohesive within Symphony. As his major reference points for the work, he cites Joseph Beuys’s 1982 exhibition that reopened the refurbished gallery and, unavoidably, the rich history of the