As the Lisson Gallery reaches the grand old age of 50, it celebrates in the form of an exhibition from one of its longest represented artists: sculptor, painter, Olympic monument-builder Anish Kapoor.
Central to the exhibition are three huge, tuberous sculptures, coated in a crimson-coloured silicone and veiled in sheets of mesh. There’s something intensely primordial about these glistening, sticky-looking things: kind of like rock formations, kind of like organs dug out of the body. Which is what Kapoor has been doing for his entire career: being evocative without ever resorting to specific assocations.
A series of gouache paintings work like two-dimensional counterparts to the sculpture: frenzied, splashy, filled with geyser-like blasts of colour and black holes surrounded by whirling vortices. They manage something pretty remarkable, which is being either very, very good or very, very not-good, without ever settling for the middle ground.
Alongside all this gloopy, elemental stuff are a few mirrored wall pieces in which you’ll find your reflection enlarged, distorted or flipped upside-down. Seductive and almost zen-like in their faultlessness, they reveal that most interesting aspect of Kapoor: for all the deep metaphysical shit going on, he’s also an inveterate crowd-pleaser. Don’t think for a second he’s not acutely aware that a lot of selfies with these pieces are going to appear on Instagram in the coming weeks. But hey, that’s the Kapoor brand for you: as populist as it is ponderous, as showman-like as it is spiritual. Go forth, snap, enjoy!