For his new collaborative work with the writer Salman Rushdie, the artist Anish Kapoor has turned away from his usual slick, pure abstract forms to create a more narrative work about sex and death, on view at the Lisson Gallery in Bell Street from today. Two patinated bronze boxes, linked by a plug of red wax, are inscribed with the first two paragraphs of Rushdie’s essay “Blood Relations, or an Interrogation of the Arabian Nights”. This is the first time Kapoor has incorporated text in his art and the work is the result of recent visits Rushdie made to the artist’s studio.
It is also the first time the gallery has had an artist mount a solo show using all the available exhibition space. Seven new large-scale pieces are on view, including a massive hemisphere of red pigment that is carved as if on a lathe by a rotating section of wall. Meanwhile, Kapoor has a number of works on display at Frieze, including a curved, silver wall-mounted disc, Untitled, 2006, on view at Barbara Gladstone (C3).