Anish Kapoor will present a major solo exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, opening on June 16, 2026, and running through October 18, 2026. The show will bring together recent pieces with his early works, tracing the artist’s five-decade-long career.
Kapoor, one of the most influential sculptors of his generation, is known for artworks that play with space and perception, often creating illusory abstract and conceptual installations. He rose to prominence in the 1980s, becoming associated with a generation of British sculptors who embraced bold forms and new materials, such as Richard Deacon and Antony Gormley. After winning the Turner Prize in 1991, Kapoor garnered international acclaim with landmark works such as Cloud Gate (2004–06) in Chicago and Sky Mirror (2006) in England.
The Hayward exhibition will highlight what Kapoor has described as “the space of the object,” with works that shift viewers’ attention from material surfaces to the unseen or imagined beyond.
At the center of the show will be three monumental works inspired by phenomenological and mythological environments. These large-scale architectural works engage with the idea of the sublime, forcing the audience to reckon with their sense of self in the face of colossal scale. Titles and additional details about the work will be released closer to the exhibition.
Visitors can expect to encounter Kapoor’s “void” works, which explore endless space. Meanwhile, the exhibition will feature some of the artist’s newer sculptures made with Vantablack, the light-absorbing nanotechnology that renders surfaces nearly invisible. Kapoor purchased the rights for the world’s darkest material in 2016. The exhibition will also feature a selection of Kapoor’s visceral sculptures referencing the human body.
The presentation also includes Kapoor’s mirror sculptures, which draw viewers into disorienting and unstable reflections. These works continue his long-standing interest in the relationship between the object and the viewer, and the way perception itself can become the subject of an artwork.
Kapoor recently made headlines when his artwork, BUTCHERED, was installed on an oil rig in the North Sea by Greenpeace activists. The activists unraveled a massive white canvas before shooting blood-red paint onto it with a hose, intended to represent “our collective grief and pain at what has been lost, but also a cry for reparation,” according to the activist group.
