MONUMENTA

Anish Kapoor at the Grand Palais-
Amazing to see the space so fully engaged in the one sculpture. Inside and outside.
When first inside you go through a revolving door into the space of about 100 square feet, with about one hundred people inside. It is hot, and red, and dark- the light is so surreal. Like you are in a womb. The warped perspective is an effect of the seams of the balloon, and also the silhouette of the greenhouse structure with the lights shining through.
I didn't realize we would go into the palais as well, and see the sculpture from the outside. What an amazing contrast, I took a deep refreshing breath. It was a very strange experience to be inside the giant balloon that I was now looking at, and touching the thick taught skin from the outside I could not imagine that hot space I had just come from was contained within.
What Romain said: I have never visited a sculpture that had people inside of it before- neither had I. And it was interesting to know that while I was inside of it I had no consciousness of the hundreds of people walking around outside of it in the bright, sunlit space. So much the opposite of the red stale aired enclosure.