Overview
- The exhibition gathers mostly recent, very large-scale sculptures and installations that overwhelm gallery space and aim to reshape how viewers sense presence and absence.
- Central pieces include the suspended Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto, a mountain-like upside-down form evoking ritual sacrifice, and Ha Makom, a threshold-like aperture set atop a mound of bone-like fragments.
- Several works use intensely light-absorbing Vantablack surfaces to create void-like effects, a material that has drawn scrutiny because Kapoor once secured exclusive rights to its use.
- The show foregrounds explicit religious and ritual language in gallery wall texts, linking sources as varied as the Old Testament and Uluru to argue for a universal or metaphysical presence.
- Coming 30 years after Kapoor’s previous Hayward survey, the exhibition serves as a late-career statement for the artist and a capstone for Rugoff’s directorship, likely prompting renewed debate over theatrical artifice, material ethics, and public reception.