Anish Kapoor’s Hayward Gallery Retrospective Is Bloodier Than Before
In London, the artist mounts massive installations, sculptures, and paintings that respond to an age of violence.
Summary
- Anish Kapoor returns to the Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre in London for the first time in 28 years for a new retrospective
- Running until October, the show gathers new and iconic works, including three gallery-wide installations, paintings, and sculptures
- The exhibition centers on recurring themes, like space and perception, while also exploring ideas of violence, abjection, and existentialism
At last, Anish Kapoor is back at the Hayward Gallery. It’s been nearly 30 years since the institution hosted his first U.K. retrospective, and his Southbank Centre comeback is messier, fleshier, more macabre, pairing new and seminal works that unsettle the senses.
On through October 18, the exhibition dives deep into Kapoor’s fascination with what he calls “the space of the object” — pieces that toe the line between material presence and illusion. From Vantablack holes engulfing Brutalist interiors to mirror-like portals out on the terraces, nothing is as it seems.
Three major installations anchor the show. One room is taken up by an inflated PVC membrane that strains between the floor and ceiling, throwing a sense of self and scale into question. In other, a bloody, mountainous threshold winds through the space. The gravity-defying “Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto” (2022) envelopes the third, plunging from the sky, just inches away from the floor tiles.
Rounding out the retrospective are paintings and sculptures created in the last decade. Relics of silicone, resin, and pigment take on the likes of splayed-open bodies and organs, reflecting our current moment, shaped by the pervasion of violent images.
From beginning to end, Kapoor’s work draws on unease and surprise, as curator Ralph Rugoff notes, “illuminating surprising links between our experiences of the sublime and extreme abjection, the spiritual and the physical.”
Book your tickets today at the Southbank Centre’s website.
Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre,
Belvedere Rd,
London SE1 8XX,
United Kingdom
