Tall Tree And The Eye sculpture at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

A visit to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Bilbao (Biscay), Spain. It is one of several museums affiliated to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists. It was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Spain, with an exhibition of 250 contemporary works of art. It is one of the largest museums in Spain.

The building, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, was built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city to the Cantabrian Sea. A work of contemporary architecture, it has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture", because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something", according to architectural critic Paul Goldberger. The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.

Tall Tree And The Eye

Over the past 30 years, sculptor Anish Kapoor has undertaken investigations into objecthood that have expanded Post-Minimalist practices and had a profound effect on the course of contemporary sculpture. Exploring color, scale, materiality, space, and process, he has worked iteratively through major themes and bodies of work, or what the artist calls "form languages". Like his early "voids", his more recent architecturally inspired, site-specific installations are phenomenological events that elicit both intimate and collective experiences. For Kapoor, the object is always in a state of becoming as it transits through varying processes of self-generation, dissolution, fragmentation, and multiplication. The body and gaze of the viewer are all-important elements of the work, as each viewer brings his or her own subjective reality to bear while witnessing and contemplating these powerful sculptural presences.

Kapoor's monumental Tall Tree and the Eye (2009), recently installed outside the museum alongside outdoor works by Louise Bourgeois, Daniel Buren, Jeff Koons, and Fujiko Nakaya, consists of 73 reflective spheres anchored around three axes. This illusionistic work continues the artist's examination of complex mathematical and structural principles embodied in sculptural form. The mirrored surfaces of the orbs reflect and refract one another, simultaneously creating and dissolving form and space. Images of the surrounding city, including the Nervión river, Buren's sculptural intervention on La Salve Bridge (Arcos rojos/Arku gorriak, 2007), and the museum itself, are cast into dynamic suspension. Kapoor reminds us of the instability and ephemerality of our vision-and by extension of our world.

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Taken in: Spain / Basque Country / Bilbao (show map)

Taken on: June 26, 2024

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Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

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Biscay

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Frank Gehry

Nervion River

Guggenheim Bilbao

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Basque Country

Museo Guggenheim Bilbao

Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa

Ingelesen Landako Kaia

Mazarredo Zumarkalea

Jose Maria Aguirre Larraona

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Campo de Volantín

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sculpture

Tall Tree And The Eye

Anish Kapoor « less

Sets appears in: • Guggenheim Museum Bilbao • Bilbao

Groups appears in: • Sculpture

Camera: Canon PowerShot SX70 HS, f/5.6, 1/400 sec, 97.7mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon PowerShot SX70 HS
Aperture:	f/5.6
Exposure Time:	0.003 sec (1/400)
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