Sandy James Image

 
For the fortieth anniversary of the City of New York’s public art fund, Anish Kapoor’s “Descension” public art piece has been placed in Brooklyn Bridge Park from May until September. This is a very visceral work ,in that it is a “negative” space work-it looks like a large round swimming pool that has a continually spiralling vortex of water funneling but is flush to the ground. In other places it has been installed with the water frothing black to emphasize the wave. The Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy insisted that the water be the same colour as the East River, so it is more transparent looking.

 
The work is fenced off by a simple bar fence and is under 24 hour guard so that no one slips into the water. The actual pool is eight meters in diameter, and the water is about 1.2 meters deep.  The water makes a thunderous sound, and observers feel the spray off the water and the vibration of the wave. The YouTube video below has the artist describing his work.

As Dezeen noted, Kapoor has been making political statements with his art.  In Kapoor’s words “In New York at this moment, yes descension! I toyed with the idea of trying out the title Descension in America to be more particular and to point harder at the current state of things, but I don’t think I need to.”