Anish Kapoor has been a household name in the art world for the last few decades. I had been hearing his name for a while when his work came to Istanbul in 2013, with his signature use of convex and concave, his red and black. His work always invites one to look again and again, from different angles, to establish that you and it are on the same plane of reality. He treads that line between visual art and illusion and he is not one to shy away from creating works that make you feel small, verging on an encounter with the sublime.
A gallery worker poses with the work “Untitled” at the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, U.K., June 15, 2026. (EPA Photo)
His latest show at the Hayward, running from June 16 to Oct. 10, 2026, is a triumph, among other things, of using size to put the viewer in her place. His sculptures push the boundaries of the concrete Hayward Gallery, like paintings trying to push themselves out of the frame. The first work you see on the ground floor is an inflated red globe made of rubbery material. It is one of the works in the exhibition that awes you with its size and color and is almost an anti-thesis of the pieces on the first floor, which, rather than jump out of the frame, find more and more impossible space within it.
