"I think I understand something about space. I think the job of a sculptor is spatial as much as it is to do with form. - Anish Kapoor.
I last encountered a show of Anish Kapoor's art at the Lisson Gallery (here), and this major exhibition at the Hayward Gallery continues many of the same themes from that of the Lisson Gallery show. He is very obviously an artist/sculptor at the very top of his game and he acquits himself nicely here with a series of gargantuan, immersive sculptures which fill, and also interestingly, change familiar perceptions of the layout of the galleries in the Hayward space. Although as a viewer you just want to touch and engage with the sculptures because of their invitingly tactile surface textures, you are warned against this before entering the exhibition. Despite this I still just wanted to run headlong at full speed into the large red inflatables occupying the lower galleries entitled All of Nothing, which look just like huge truckles of red-rinded Edam cheese, to see just how much bounce they had. It is the ambitious scale that the sculptures/installations are executed with that creates such a sense of awe in the viewer and also the ways in which occupy space, commanding the galleries and the way in which you negotiate them. From Plastic Sacrifice I, II, and III, resembling three massive bags of what I presume are dark, blood red paint, but resemble bagged up offal from a butchers, to the familiar shiny, industrial scale, concave steel mirror sculptures displayed on the Hayward's roof terraces that warp and turn imagery upside-down in their distortions of reality. The optical effects of these polished, concave mirror sculptures and the circular discs which upend the view of the world were my favourites in the exhibition. Kapoor's colour palette is predominantly red and black throughout. He uses Alizarin Crimson and a substance known as Vantablack - the blackest known substance in the world - which he has bought the exclusive rights to as an artistic material. The works made from the nanomaterial Vantablack are supposed to draw the viewer in creating a sense of vertigo with their optical trickery, but I found these sculptures the least convincing as they just seemed flat to me, not appearing to resemble endless, deep voids at all when I looked into them. The roped off hole in the ground entitled 'Descent into Limbo' was the only one that deceived my eyes, as it looked flat but actually was a real hole in the ground a couple of metres deep, but this still didn't make it a great work of art. Coincidentally the last artist to occupy the upper galleries in the last exhibition here earlier this year - Chiharu Shiota (here), like Kapoor, also chooses to work with a dramatically reduced colour palette of black and red. Sculptures I did enjoy in this gallery were the stone slab carving like a portal or doorway, and the highly polished concave disc which turned reflections on their head, and reflected the gallery lights beautifully. After these void works you go up a floor into a space featuring a huge, blood red stalactite with black and white streaks entitled Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto hanging from the ceiling, dominating the central space. Its title is from the Old Testament and refers to the place where God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac in the Bible, although at the last minute, a ram took Isaac’s place in the bloody ritual instead. This is one of the more interesting galleries as this huge stalactite competes for viewers attention with another series of large, red inflatable balls bulging into the space, and the visceral bags of offal hanging on the walls. The erupting volcanic painting displayed amongst all this seems almost inconsequential but ties in nicely with the huge, mountainous stalactite and its reference to Mount Moriah. Indeed the weakest element in the exhibition are Kapoor's paintings which do tie in nicely with the visceral, apocalyptic themes, but get a little lost in the drama and scale of the sculptural installations against which they are forced to compete. Up to the top floor and you experience 'Ha Makon' another massive sculpture reminiscent of Uluru, the Australian sandstone monolith, with a highly textured surface created from wood chips covered in a vivid red paint. At its zenith sits a structured carved opening similar to that of an Aztec pyramid, again much like a doorway/portal to anther dimension. The last gallery space features the Ritual Expiation series, some of the most visceral works like interior bodily organs extracted and left in metal sluice trays with channels for the fluids to run off. They are like the remains of ancient ritual scarifices or mysterious alien pods from a dystopian future. Visitors feel a sense of trespass, it's as we have unexpectedly stumbled across some diabolical lab experiment, and with this comes a sense of revulsion but equally fascination. Whilst in these upper galleries do not miss Kapoor's signature highly polished, reflective sculptures situated out on the terraces. They looked magnificent, perfectly placed amongst and reflecting the SouthBank complex's Brutalist architecture wonderfully in the strong summer sunshine.
Anish Kapoor
until 18th October
Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre,
Belvedere Road,
London,
SE1 8XX
