GOTHENBURG.- The first work in virtual reality by internationally acclaimed artist Anish Kapoor was unveiled in Gothenburg in Sweden on 9 December 2017 as part of the official Nobel Week programme to celebrate the 2017 Nobel Prize.

Anish Kapoor said: “Into Yourself–Fall” is my first VR work. In it I think of the body falling into itself and turning itself inside out; vertigo as descent inward. The work presented in Gothenburg is a work in progress which will be completed in the next few months.”

Nobel Week Dialogue, this year hosted in Gothenburg, aims to stimulate discussion at the highest level on a topical science-related theme by bringing together Nobel Laureates, the world's leading scientists and experts, key opinion leaders, policy makers, artists and the public. The theme for this year event is ‘The Future of Truth’ and is being attended by seven Nobel Laureates and some 20 experts in the field.

In conjunction with the release of his first ever work in V.R, Anish Kapoor will be participating in the Dialogue in a discussion with Daniel Birnbaum, director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, on the theme of “Artistic Truth in Virtual Space”.

Anish Kapoor’s work has always challenged our perceptions of what is real–or true. He first came to prominence in the early 80’s with a series of pigment works that mysteriously emerged from walls and floor of the gallery. Strange organic and architectural forms of pure colour and material that left the viewer unsure of their solidity and boundaries. Kapoor has gone on to create works in materials such and stone, mirror, wax, silicone and earth that confound and confuse our relationship both to the space around us, the object, and the objects of our own interior. Scale too has become an integral tool in these languages of form and material. Kapoor’s sculptures; their voids, protrusions and skin, create a dislocation and disruption of our perceptual boundaries between subject and object, bearing the potential to provoke both feelings of anxiety and dread as well as pleasure in the objects sublime formlessness. This attitude of the work to the relationship between viewer and object, solid reality and boundless experience makes virtual reality a space full of potential for Kapoor to work in.

Anish Kapoor was born in Bombay in 1954. Over the last four decades he has exhibited in prestigious institutions world-wide. Recent solo exhibitions include Museo d-Arte Contempoanea di Roma (MACRO), Rome (2016), Museo Universitario Arte Contemporánea (MUAC), Mexico City (2016), the gardens of the Château de Versailles (2015) and Martin–Gropius_Bau, Berlin(2013). He represented Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale (1990), for which he was awarded the Premio Duemila, and won the Turner Prize in 1991. His major public commissions include; Marsyas for the Unilever Series, Tate Modern (2002), Cloud Gate for the Millennium Park in Chicago (2004); Leviathan for the Grand Palais, Paris (2011), and Orbit for the London 2012 Olympic Park. In 2013 Ark Nova, the world's first inflatable concert hall, launched for the Lucerne Festival in Japan. He was elected Royal Academician in 1999, awarded the Premium Imperiale in 2011, the Padma Bhushan in 2012, and 2013 was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours. In 2017 he was named the Genesis Prize Laureate. He lives and works in London