British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor installed an obscure vortex filled with violent churning and frothing black water in an old wooden floor of a former movie theater located in San Gimignano, Italy. Called Decension, the ominous installation is an exploration of life and perhaps different dimensions. The vortex is also an illusion of different worlds and perspectives, which resemble the fear of the unknown in humankind. In reference to his piece, Kapoor said:
“All my life I have reflected and worked on the concept that there is more space than can be seen, that there are void spaces, or, as it were, that there is a vaster horizon. The odd thing about removing content, in making space, is that we, as human beings, find it very hard to deal with the absence of content. It’s the horror vacui. This Platonic concept lies at the origin of the myth of the cave, the one from which humans look towards the outside world. But here there is also a kind of Freudian opposite image, that of the back of the cave, which is the dark and empty back of being. Your greatest poet, Dante, also ventured into a place like that. It is the place of the void, which paradoxically is full – of fear, of darkness. Whether you represent it with a mirror or with a dark form, it is always the ‘back,’ the point that attracts my interest and triggers my creativity.”
