Artist: Anish Kapoor

For his first solo exhibition with Lisson Shanghai, Anish Kapoor presents a series of recent gouache drawings on paper. Known for his rigorous experimentation with materials and his ability to conjure uncanny sensory experiences, Kapoor’s practice defies genres by seamlessly blending sculptural and painterly approaches. A cornerstone in the history of British and global contemporary art, his works distort physical space and interrogate the allusive processes of visual perception. This new body of work features rich, vibrant colours – from deep purples and blues to lavish, fiery layers of yellow, orange and red – where unknown forces appear to emerge from a mysterious darkness.

The recent drawings in this exhibition focus on the void – a central motif for Kapoor – and the tensions between light and dark, inside and outside permeate these works. Kapoor’s forms turn themselves inside out with brushstrokes that richly and energetically impregnate each drawing with vibrant hues, as if to negate the idea of an outer surface, inviting the viewer to contemplate their inner depths. In these drawings, his unique sense of colour as visceral substance, reverberates through biological and architectural form, as openings, cracks, windows and passages fade into impenetrable oblivion. The works are saturated with raw, emotional intensity, yet at their core, they evoke a transcendent light, a luminous dawn emerging amidst the forms.

The energetic application of pigment elicits a sense of movement and raw elemental force, typical of Kapoor’s exploration of light, depth, and emotion. Much of Kapoor's oeuvre draws the viewer into an introspective engagement with colour, form, and space; here we see energetic compositions dominated by a central dark void, embedded in a glowing landscape, or reversely a glowing void within dark mountainous form. The intense interplay between the background, foreground, and interiority suggests an infinite depth that pulls the viewer inward. The surrounding hues of blue, earthy green and red strokes evoke organic vitality, as if the void is emerging from, or dissolving into, a landscape.

In one work, a bold stroke of black penetrates a vivid red interior, grounding the composition with a dramatic contrast that recalls a void, shadow, or abyss. The swirling lines and layered textures suggest both chaos and energy, a reflection of Kapoor’s fascination with the elemental forces of nature and the dichotomy of light and darkness, creation and destruction.

This presentation follows the artist’s major solo exhibition in Beijing at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Museum and Taimiao Art Museum of the Imperial Ancestral Temple, by the walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing (2019). This exhibition presented some of the artist’s most significant and celebrated works, featuring powerful, self-generated installations and geometrical sculptures. It also follows a solo presentation at Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning (MoCAUP) in 2021, which spanned the full breadth of his practice and presented some of the most celebrated works of the last thirty-five years, from his iconic wax sculptures, paintings and mirror works, to his models for past and potential architectural works.