Dragon, made from eight Japanese riverbed stones, crosses a number of languages of form in Kapoor's work: the non-object, the auto-generated object, the monochrome, and the void. In Dragon the void is turned inside out. Through the simple intervention of covering the stones in deep Prussian-blue pigment, a perceptual transformation of matter occurs. Its skin, as opposed to its interior, has become ethereal and boundless; stones that weigh nearly three tons each appear both heavy and weightless, as if floating above the ground. It is both what it once was and something else, an in-between object.
These stones, formed in nature through the process of corrosion, absorb the pigment to create a surface imbued with void. In conversation with Homi Bhaba, Kapoor once stated: ‘The work seems to have a darkness, seems to be somewhere in-between body, cave, and beast.’
