Anish Kapoor Turns the Hayward Gallery Into a Cathedral of Awe

Nearly three decades after the Hayward Gallery hosted the first major British survey of Anish Kapoor’s work, the artist returns with an exhibition that is larger, darker, and more psychologically unsettling than ever. On view from June 16 through October 18, 2026, the exhibition occupies the entire Brutalist building, transforming its raw concrete architecture into a landscape of illusion, dread, and sublime beauty.

Kapoor has long been fascinated by thresholds—between solid and void, interior and exterior, body and spirit—and this ambitious retrospective demonstrates that those obsessions have only deepened. Rather than presenting a chronological survey, curator Ralph Rugoff has assembled an immersive sequence of encounters that overwhelm the senses before engaging the intellect. Visitors are not simply looking at sculpture; they are walking through an environment in which perception itself becomes unstable.

The exhibition opens with one of Kapoor’s monumental new inflatable works, an enormous PVC membrane that appears to breathe as it stretches impossibly across the gallery. Equal parts engineering feat and living organism, it immediately establishes the show’s central tension between mass and emptiness. Throughout the exhibition, Kapoor repeatedly transforms familiar architectural space into something uncanny.

His celebrated mirror sculptures remain among the exhibition’s greatest pleasures. Their flawlessly polished surfaces twist reflections into impossible geometries, folding viewers, ceilings, and walls into fluid, ever-changing compositions. They are playful on the surface but philosophically profound, suggesting that reality is always more unstable than we assume.

If the mirrors invite wonder, Kapoor’s Vantablack works inspire something closer to existential unease. These seemingly bottomless voids absorb nearly all visible light, making sculpture disappear altogether. Standing before them produces a peculiar sensation: the eye searches desperately for form but finds only absence. They remain among the most convincing artistic explorations of nothingness ever created.

The emotional center of the exhibition, however, lies in Kapoor’s recent works exploring blood, flesh, and sacrifice. Thick crimson pigments spill across monumental forms while silicone and wax surfaces evoke exposed tissue and wounded bodies. These works could easily descend into spectacle, yet Kapoor imbues them with an almost liturgical gravity. Biblical references, mortality, and violence are never illustrated directly but seem to emerge from the material itself. The result is unsettling without becoming sensational.

Not every piece succeeds equally. A handful of recent paintings feel less urgent than the sculptural installations surrounding them, and the repetition of certain motifs occasionally blunts their impact. Yet even these quieter moments serve as breathing space within an exhibition deliberately calibrated between tension and release.

What ultimately distinguishes this exhibition is Kapoor’s refusal to settle for visual pleasure alone. His sculptures demand physical, emotional, and philosophical engagement, reminding viewers that great art can still evoke genuine awe in an era saturated with digital distraction. The Hayward Gallery’s uncompromising concrete interiors prove the perfect setting for an artist whose work continually dissolves the boundary between architecture and imagination.

This is not merely one of the year’s essential exhibitions—it is among the strongest presentations of Kapoor’s career, confirming his enduring ability to make the invisible feel startlingly real.