Anish Kapoor (b. 1954)

'The artist devotes himself to the experience of emptiness and fullness, darkness and light, through pure materials alone - limestone and sandstone, sanded and polished. He wants to capture the stone's inner power, which he considers an element not of stasis but of potential action. Limestone originates in water, a mobile, liquid element. Susceptible to evaporation, water can be transformed into air, which is itself open to further metamorphoses, one of these being fire. Kapoor's choice of limestone thus encompasses the possibility of a flux among the four elements of traditional cosmology: earth, air, fire, and water. Participating in the language of esoterism and initiation, Kapoor's limestone works reflect the perceptible processes of becoming, as they proceed, from within, from light to darkness...'
(G. Celant, Anish Kapoor, exh. cat., Fondazione Prada, Milan 1998, pp. 23-24)