Anish Kapoor, Inwendig Volle Figur, 2006, Paint and resin, 70.9 x 128 x 147.25 in. (180 x 325 x 374 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery. Photo: Dave Morgan

BOSTON.- Sculptor Anish Kapoor—perhaps best known in this country for the popular public art work, Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millennium Park—is the focus of a major exhibition this summer at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. The show features 14 monumental works made since 1980, a period in which Kapoor's sculptures and installations have grown increasingly ambitious and complex. Many of the works are on view for the first time in the United States, including a new acrylic sculpture (Untitled, 2007). The first U.S. museum survey of Kapoor's art in more than 15 years, Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future opens May 30 and runs through September 7, 2008.

"Anish Kapoor is widely regarded as one of the world’s most accomplished sculptors working today," says Jill Medvedow, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art. "This exhibition will afford American audiences a long overdue opportunity to experience the extraordinary clarity, subtlety, and power of his art."

"Anish Kapoor's works are both viscerally captivating and conceptually resonant," says Nicholas Baume, ICA Chief Curator. "His sculptures marry a modernist sense of pure materiality with a fascination for the manipulation of form and the perception of space."

Kapoor emerged as one of a highly inventive generation of British sculptors during the 1980s. His early work shows the influence of his Indian heritage in the use of raw colored pigments and traces of Indian architecture that provide a basis for a striking formal language. In the 1990s, these references evolved into a more abstract and complex exploration of the sculptural object, often investigating the relationships of opposites such as dark and light, presence and absence, solid and intangible. The effect can be astonishing and, at times, disorienting. Sometimes using the materials of classical sculpture, including stone and bronze, Kapoor also developed newly applied forms of aluminum, pigment, enamel, resin, polymer, and PVC.

Anish Kapoor was born in Bombay, India, in 1954. He currently lives and works in London. Kapoor has had solo exhibitions in institutions around the world including the Kunsthaus Bregenz, the Museum of Modern Art, Slovenia, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. He has also been included in numerous international group exhibitions including the Shanghai Biennale, the Lyon Biennale, Documenta IX, and the Venice Biennale. Kapoor has created major installations for the Tate Modern, London; the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; and Millennium Park, Chicago. In 1990, Kapoor was awarded "Premio Duemila" at the Venice Biennale, and in 1991, he was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize. Cloud Gate, his monumental permanent sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park, will soon be joined by a stone monument in New York’s Hanover Square for the British Memorial Garden, commemorating the British victims of 9/11.

The exhibition Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue including an interview with the curator, Nicholas Baume, and further contributions by Partha Mitter, Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex, and Mary Jane Jacob, Professor and Chair of Sculpture, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The book is available for purchase in the ICA Store.

Anish Kapoor, S-Curve, 2006, Polished steel, 85 1/4 x 384 x 48 in. (216.5 x 975.4 x 121.9 cm). Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White, Los Angeles