For Anish Kapoor, the greatest challenge for artists today is to create without constraints: “Artists are speculators on a conversation between what really takes place in the world and the symbolic language of an interior landscape.
Rémy Martin x Anish Kapoor
The House of Rémy Martin has unveiled an exceptional collaboration with internationally renowned contemporary artist Anish Kapoor:
a limited-edition Rémy Martin XO decanter and
an exclusive artwork.
“There was a sense from the beginning of this project with Rémy Martin that it refers to my history. My father used to drink it when I was a boy in India, and I carried that with me.”
–
Anish Kapoor
01 | THE COLLABORATION
AN EXCEPTIONAL COLLABORATION
The proposition of an artistic collaboration around the Rémy Martin XO decanter resonated with Anish Kapoor on a deep, almost esoteric level. He remembered the prized bottles that his father brought back from his ocean adventures with the Indian Navy: “The bottle had a strange reality for me. It was seen by him, and therefore by us, as being sophisticated and delicate, something to be dealt with in a respectful way.”
Kapoor, a boundary breaking sculptor and conceptual artist, fascinated by the idea that the external world mirrors our inner reality, that our perceptions shape our reality, has transformed his personal memories of Rémy Martin into an experience: a metaphysical journey into color, form and sensation.
“Rémy Martin XO perfectly embodies the heritage and savoir-faire of the Maison. It is the ultimate expression of our terroir. Its opulent radiance paired with the timeless design of its magnificent decanter has inspired Anish Kapoor whose creation now becomes a part of our brand’s enduring legacy.”
– Jean-Philippe Hecquet,
CEO of the House of Rémy Martin
Collaborations with luxury goods can be complicated because we don’t want our expression to be limited to a brand vision. Rémy Martin, however, gave me the freedom to explore my own.”
02 | CREATIVE PROCESS
THE CREATIVE PROCESS, A METAPHYSICAL JOURNEY
Anish Kapoor does not explore objects, but our relationship with them, the meaning we give them, until meaning itself becomes the subject. “I’m after that sort of in-between. Somewhere between meaning and no meaning. Objects are not simply as described. Most of them have double lives: the one they say they have and another that is to do with our own sense of what they might be.”
So how do you grasp the meaning of an object like the Rémy Martin XO decanter? How do you interpret its reality?
When Anish Kapoor fixed his eyes on the iconic Rémy Martin XO decanter, he asked himself the same questions that his own works solicit: “What is it? Is it art? Maybe it’s not art. What’s my relationship with it? What does it mean? Does it mean anything?” He observed the color radiating from its solar shape. It was compelling.
He photographed the sculpted glass decanter from every angle, catching the rays jumping off the scoops, receding into the indents, only to splash out elsewhere as the light changed. “Something happened. Something poetic. Something revealing. I began to imagine an art work to sit alongside it.” The artist once again sensed the energy of the void – a recurring theme throughout his oeuvre – a space filled not with emptiness, but with abundance, plenitude, infinite possibilities. He searched for that color, between darkness and light, a blend of all the shades of Rémy Martin XO eaux-de-vie:
“Since my earliest work, I have been compelled by color – those that splash out at you but hold deep darkness too, deep interiority. It’s the dichotomy between the elements that jump out and those that recede that draws me. I want to make color immersive, so it completely takes you over. I don’t want to make nice painted objects. I want lots of layers. The sense that if you touch it, it will change.”
03 | A LIMITED EDITION XO DECANTER
A LIMITED EDITION XO DECANTER MIRRORING INFINITE POSSIBILITIES
After immersing himself in the color of Rémy Martin XO Cognac Fine Champagne, its rich depths and dazzling iridescence, Anish Kapoor meditated on the question of reflections. He began to imagine an art work in the image of his signature concave mirrors, which gave rise to a new limited edition decanter design. Working closely with the designers, he revisited the original 70cl glass mold to form a minimalist curve with a concave centre in glowing amber tones. The front surface is smooth and transparent and fuses with the classic scooped design on the back, amplifying its luminous effect, enhancing the solar shape and reflecting infinite possibilities.
Featuring a new copper bottle neck and stopper, it unlocks an alternative Rémy Martin universe, like a magnetic portal to another world:
“When I was working with the designers to make the decanter, relating to this liquid and how it functions, I thought about how I originally knew it through my father, how I’ve picked it up from my past over the years, so it’s become present and real. I wanted to translate these reflections, reflections of reality, reflections of light. I toyed with it and decided on a much simpler design.”
ANISH KAPOOR’S VISION
“I’ve been playing with concave mirrors for a few years now. They offer an alternative perception of reality and create endless reflections like Rémy Martin XO. After making hollow forms painted deep Prussian blue to create a void filled with darkness, I began to make the same kind of objects with a mirror: a void filled with reflections. The concavity creates optical illusions. It turns the world upside down and induces interiority. It invites us to think about the inner life of things.”
About Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor Interview
About Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading contemporary artists. Renowned for public sculptures that are both adventures in form and engage public space, Kapoor maneuvers between vastly different scales, across numerous series of work. Immense PVC skins, flayed or inflated within architecture or landscape; paintings undulating with a viscerally abject physicality; mirrors which suck the viewer into their vertiginous aura and pigmented voids, carved into stone or within the ground beneath us that confound our perception – Kapoor’s work situates our inner world into the world around us, turned inside out, its inversions and protrusions summon up deep-felt metaphysical polarities of container and contained, being and non-being, that disrupt our quotidian reality.
04 | THE ART PIECE
A WORK OF ART CREATED FOR RÉMY MARTIN
As part of his thought process, mid-creative flow, Anish Kapoor created an art work for the House of Rémy Martin, a painted concave mirror, inspired by all the shades of Rémy Martin XO eaux-de-vie: hundreds of hues, ranging from pale gold to dark amber, carefully blended, then patiently aged in French oak casks, browned by time in the darkness of our cellars. As you move around the work, the colors change, endless rays of reflections come to light:
“I had to search for this color. Rémy Martin XO is a liquid and as the light changes, it changes. It offers a kaleidoscope of sensations, aromas and emotions. But as a colorist, it seemed that color was the most direct way of getting into it and the concave mirror captures its reflective qualities.”
With this work, Anish Kapoor has created a physical presence to the opulence of Rémy Martin XO, an immersive celebration of its flamboyant aromas, a symbol of the solar radiance of the XO decanter and an invitation to contemplate new and future realities.
