Have you ever chopped up fresh, raw liver? Do you know the glistening, slippery feel of it? Its rich, silky red colour, the stringy webbing of white fat? Well, that’s pretty much what Anish Kapoor’s new paintings look like, except enlarged to over three metres high, so that their huge, square-ish shapes resemble a pulpy, volcanic mass of flesh and internal organs. Sculpted from silicone, their surfaces seethe and buckle, twisting and wrapping into intestinal knots, gelatinous ridges, and great, marbled, shank-like protuberances. It isn’t, needless to say, the sort of show to see if you’re feeling at all peckish – or if you’re a vegetarian for that matter.
Of course, previous works by Kapoor have also triggered these corporeal associations and sensations. But with this series he’s pushed the connection towards a kind of manic, yet also more straightforward, literalism. With titles like ‘Internal Objects’ and ‘Shedding’, there isn’t much ambiguity here or room for nuance. Yet there’s also something irresistible about the works’ sheer and spectacular viscerality.
Dispersed throughout the show are also some sculptures, which are more in line with the sort of abstract, archetypal forms Kapoor is best known for. The larger floor pieces here are carved from semi-translucent pink onyx, while the smaller wall-based works are made from gold-plated, super-reflective stainless steel. All the objects feature single holes, slits, or sloping channels, and their titles again imply the human body: ‘Like An Ear’, for example, or ‘Glove’.
But who does Kapoor think he’s kidding? We all know what sort of orifices his sculptures are really suggesting, with their smooth apertures and labial curvatures. And if anything, it’s this sense of sublimated sexuality, this pristine blankness, that ends up being more disturbing that the meaty mash-ups of his paintings.
Gabriel Coxhead