It is not perhaps as perverse as it may seem to call this new show of sculpture “Painting” since colour has always been crucial to Anish Kapoor, from his earliest piles of pigment to the giant red double-ended PVC trumpet that, until recently, filled the Tate’s Turbine Hall (right, “As if to celebrate I discovered a mountain blooming with red flowers”, 1981). Whether he is making reflective dishes, whirlpools of water or boundless voids in boulders of stone, all his work revolves around exploring human perception, the psychological effect of visual stimulation and what it means to believe what we see. Certainly in this new body of work, his first show since the unveiling of the Tate behemoth last autumn, Kapoor has gone into phenomenological overdrive: giant green, blue and pink dishes over four metres wide change colour as you walk past them: a trippy light and pigment “happening” where flashing light makes a pile of pure colour morph into positive and negative, and two free standing works which can be entered by the viewer, all show him to be ever more adept in manipulating the senses (14 May-28 June).
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Anish Kapoor: Painting'