Explore celebrated sculptor Anish Kapoor’s otherworldly two-dimensional artworks at new WSU exhibit | Arts & Culture | Spokane | The Pacific Northwest Inlander

We understand what we see in multiple dimensions. Flat surfaces, such as paintings, have length and width. Sculptural objects add a third dimension of depth. And in the early 1900s, Albert Einstein and other scientists posited the fourth dimension — time — which we can “see” in artworks that deal with motion (as well as in our own mirrors).

An artwork’s dimensionality is important; it influences how the audience experiences the work and is one way to consider its impact. Celebrated international artist Anish Kapoor, for example, is best known for his monumental sculptures like Chicago’s Cloud Gate. The giant bean-shaped structure of mirror-polished metal measures 33 feet tall, or the height of a two-story building. It’s 66 feet long (the length of a cricket pitch), and 43 feet wide (the equivalent of three Volkswagen Beetles, end-to-end). The work is so big, it redefines how you navigate the space around it.

Kapoor is less well-known for his two-dimensional work than his sculpture, especially his prints featured in “Dissolving Margins” at Washington State University’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, opening Aug. 19.

Even for Sir Kapoor’s worldwide fans — Queen Elizabeth II knighted the Indian-born British citizen in 2013 — his history of printmaking might be surprising, says the WSU museum’s executive director, Ryan Hardesty. When he discovered a considerable number of Kapoor prints among the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation’s collection of more than 22,000 artworks, Hardesty realized a Kapoor print exhibition would be the first survey of its kind.

“It fired me up to introduce that to our WSU community,” Hardesty says.

“Dissolving Margins” spans 35 years of Kapoor’s five-decade career in printmaking. It also offers a bridge to his broader ways of working, Hardesty says.

“I see a lot of linkage between his printmaking practice and the sculptures and installations in terms of similar themes and questions that he’s been asking across his entire career.”

Hardesty describes how Kapoor often creates prints in series, so that an installation combining 10 to 15 similar artworks, each a few feet across, can achieve a sense of monumentality similar to Kapoor’s sculptural work.

Recurring themes in Kapoor’s lifetime of overall work are also monumental: infinity and the void, male and female, and body versus mind, to name a few.

Humans have been fascinated with their own minds for centuries, documented as early as ancient Hindu scripture. Since the 1800s, Western academics like philosopher Immanuel Kant and psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung dissected the idea of the unconscious, expanding our understanding of “space” as both physical and metaphysical.

“In some ways [Kapoor’s] prints are a space for the head, almost for conceptual meanderings,” says Hardesty, relaying what the artist told him in a June 2025 video call interview.

An inner space, as opposed to the external space Kapoor interacts with when creating sculptural works? Yes, Hardesty says.

In that way, Kapoor’s work goes beyond two- and even three-dimensions to a relatively modern concept called the fifth dimension. It deals with such esoteric topics as dark matter and string theory, but also spiritual consciousness and reincarnation. Although interested parties differ as to the interpretation and import of the fifth dimension, there is no disagreement that any additional dimensions in our universe address the unknown.

That fits with Kapoor’s message about his artwork — he doesn’t have one.

“It feels to me that what that does is to close the circuit with the viewer,” Kapoor told Hardesty during their interview. Instead, says Kapoor, “A great poem holds a position between meaning and no meaning. That sits beautifully in an artwork — meaning/no meaning… we are able to ponder.”

Kapoor’s work is challenging, Hardesty admits, but also universally accessible.

“It just asks us just to be open to looking and experiencing and feeling,” he says. ♦

Anish Kapoor: Dissolving Margins, from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation • Aug. 19-March 14, 2026; open Tue-Sat from 10 am-4 pm • Free • Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU • 1535 N.E. Wilson Road, Pullman • museum.wsu.edu • 509-335-1910

DOUBLE VISION

In addition to “Dissolving Margins,” Anish Kapoor is one of 18 artists featured in a concurrent exhibit at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU titled, “Color Outside the Lines.”

Curated by Maryanna G. Ramirez at Portland State University’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and also culled from the family foundation’s art collection, “Color Outside the Lines” explores how artists have used color to “question institutions, beliefs, and expectations,” according to the exhibition website.

In addition to Kapoor, exhibition artists include Derrick Adams, Polly Apfelbaum, Antonius-Tín Bui, Iván Carmona, Lauren Hana Chai, Caitlin Cherry, Sam Gilliam, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, Ana María Hernando, Jenny Holzer, Salomón Huerta, James Lavadour, Christopher Myers, Faith Ringgold, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Andy Warhol, and Stanley Whitney.

On Sept. 25, Heap of Birds (Arapaho and Cheyenne) will give a presentation during the exhibition opening, which kicks off at noon with a curatorial tour led by Ramirez and WSU museum’s Ryan Hardesty.

Although both of the upcoming WSU exhibitions deal with color, says Hardesty, “Color Outside the Lines” is full of storytelling and narrative elements compared to Kapoor’s abstract imagery. “So I think that just feels like a good counterpart for our audience at WSU and the region here.”

— CARRIE SCOZZARO