Anish Kapoor has returned to the Hayward Gallery at London's Southbank Centre for a landmark exhibition nearly three decades after his first major UK survey there. The show, curated by Ralph Rugoff and presented as part of the Southbank Centre's 75th anniversary, spans the entire building with new commissions and seminal works from recent decades. Highlights include a colossal inflated PVC membrane, the gravity-defying installation *Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto* (2022), and works coated in Vantablack, alongside mirrored sculptures and visceral paintings exploring flesh and bodily interiors.
The exhibition matters because it marks a major moment for London's cultural scene, reuniting Kapoor with the institution that helped establish his reputation in the UK. It also underscores Kapoor's enduring influence on contemporary sculpture and installation art, particularly his exploration of perception, scale, and the sublime. By transforming the Hayward's Brutalist architecture into a sequence of disorienting encounters, the show challenges viewers to question their own sensory experiences and the boundaries between presence and absence, materiality and illusion.