Anish Kapoor

It’s clear from his major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery that Anish Kapoor shares Time Out’s fondness for the colour palette red and black. Although, it must be said, his shades have smarter names: Alizarin Crimson and Vantablack. The latter absorbs 99.965% of visible light, holding the world record for the darkest manmade substance, and Kapoor has purchased the exclusive rights to use it (to the consternation of some of his art world peers). 

It's quite a privilege to have a solo show at the Hayward Gallery. Very few artists have been invited back for a second: Kapoor’s last exhibition here was in 1998, long before Chicago’s ‘Bean’ was commissioned, before he won the Turner Prize, and before he became one of the world’s most celebrated sculptors.

Nearly thirty years later, this show gathers together many of Kapoor’s greatest hits: concave mirrored surfaces that turn the world upside down; hulking great sculptures caked in thick crimson oil paint, resembling bodies turned inside out. The opening room is dominated by a monumental new work that looks like a bicycle pump has been taken to a Babybel. The jacked-up crimson PVC form bulges against the Hayward’s brutalist concrete, wedged so tightly into the corners that it looks as though, with the slightest nudge, it might pop. 

The depthless voids come next; a roomful of works where Kapoor’s Vantablack is put to the test. What appears to be a deep fissure carved into the wall is, in fact, nothing more than a crack-shaped form painted black. Elsewhere, what looks head-on like a perfectly flat square of darkness reveals itself, as you move around it, to be a three-dimensional sculpture. So it does work. 

More than simple optical tricks, these pieces expose how fragile perception really is

Although there is a reason there’s a barrier around ‘Descent into Limbo’ (1992), a black hole in the ground that is, somewhat alarmingly, an actual hole in the ground. This was confirmed when a 60-year-old Italian man fell into the work while it was on show at a museum in Porto in 2018. Thankfully, unlike Alice’s rabbit hole, Kapoor’s dizzying void is only a couple of metres deep. These works are Kapoor at his best; they make you think, they intrigue you, they encourage you to drag a friend over and test whether their eyes can be fooled too. More than simple optical tricks, these pieces expose how fragile perception really is. 

Other pieces are less persuasive. Kapoor has always maintained he has nothing to say about his art. The viewer’s role, he argues, is to complete the work through their own interpretations. Some may find this liberating – how fun to stand beneath ‘Mount Moriah’, a mountain hanging upside from the ceiling, and be impressed by its improbable  suspension, the violence and sacrifice its visceral, bloody surface seems to suggest. 

Still, other viewers may occasionally find themselves a bit lost. Forgive me, but I sometimes like a small instruction manual when confronted with a PVC Babybel the size of your average London flat. Otherwise, like most people who find themselves with a good view but slightly lost for words, you resort to taking out your phone and photographing it. Still, it will look fantastic on your Instagram. So perhaps it’s a win-win for everyone.