The Easel

23rd June 2026

Anish Kapoor disorientates, delights and disturbs at the Hayward Gallery

Kapoor likes his art big – think Chicago’s highly reflective “Bean” sculpture – and his new London show follows suit. One installation appears alarmingly like guts and there’s a monumental, “mysterious” upside-down mountain. Some objects are coated with non-reflective black that creates “a space full of what doesn’t exist”. This is vintage Kapoor, messing around with our perceptions. Says he, “Apollinaire’s notion was to take the viewers to the edge and push them over – and that remains fundamental.”

JR’s inflatable cave across the pont neuf is now open in Paris

The artist JR has created an installation artwork covering Paris’s Pont Neuf. This is not a duplicate of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapping but rather a printed fabric mountain range within which is a 120m inflated fabric tunnel. A soundscape, scented air and mobile-based “experiences” give the tunnel a cave-like environment meant to evoke both fears of darkness and feelings of shelter. Says JR “I designed [it] as an experience where fullness and emptiness exist in balance”. An interview is here.