‘Traditionally in the art world, we think of scale as a problematic subject,’ says Anish Kapoor, speaking from his London studio as he finalises the works appearing in his major new Hayward Gallery exhibition, opening on 16 June. ‘In the sense that, why is it so big? It is a perfectly legitimate question, it seems to me. Barnett Newman used to say that scale is not a matter of size, it's a matter of meaning.’

For the Mumbai-born, Turner Prize-winning artist, the scale is important for the physical reaction it incites in the viewer, a visceral response brought palpably to life in his landmark exhibition at the Hayward. In his first retrospective in the space for 28 years, new and fundamental works squeeze, drip and disorient in the Hayward’s Brutalist enclaves.

Kapoor’s works ask us to question the reality around us - where are we in the space, and how are we moving through it? How can our perceptions of what is real shift, and why are we so easily prepared to surrender our grip on lucidity when confronted with works which discombobulate us?

Take entering the exhibition, upon which we are immediately confronted with a vast, red, inflated PVC membrane that easily fills the six-metre-high space. Suddenly, we are small, squeezing around the perimeter of the work in a fruitless attempt to see it all. Elsewhere, perception is treated as lightly as proportion, in the epic Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto (2022) which hangs, impossibly, from the ceiling. In subverting the familiar curve of the mountain, Kapoor emphasises the unnatural nature of the act God asked Abraham to do at the location in the title. Kapoor’s mountain runs red with the blood which would have flowed had Abraham sacrificed his son, Isaac.

This exploration into ritual sacrifice, and the inner workings of the body, defines Kapoor’s practice. Upstairs, there are metal trays which ooze with red painted silicone forms that could be clots of tissue; sinews wind their way around the containers and spouts facilitate the draining of the ‘blood.’ All of life, in all its rawness, is here.

‘Think of Jackson Pollock,’ Kapoor says. ‘He pours this paint all over the ground again and again every day, in a kind of mad frenzy, and then takes this thing and puts it on the wall. When you see a Jackson Pollock, it is cosmic. He turns it from Earth and blood and body into cosmos - that's the fundamental alchemical transformation. That's why he's the great artist of that whole generation.’

Kapoor’s own transformations, from material into life matter, are equally sublime, and fundamental to our human experience. There is a room here dedicated to Kapoor’s famous uncoverings of the void, with sculptures in Vantablack – a substance created with nanotechnologies, which means it absorbs 99% of light – presenting delightful optical illusions. Try as you might, you cannot make out the shape, form or silhouette of these works, so entirely swallowed up are they by the material. It is a magic trick, and one in which we cannot trust our own senses.

‘I believe in putting the viewer in the place where it is all possible,’ Kapoor says. ‘[French poet] Guillaume Apollinaire’s notion was to take the viewers to the edge, and push them over - and that remains fundamental.’

Anish Kapoor at Southbank Centre's Hayward Gallery from 16 June – 18 October 2026

Designed by artist Anish Kapoor, a new Naples station blends art and architecture, poised and somewhat mysterious – a functional piece of sculpture. Officially titled the Monte Sant’Angelo Subway Station, the striking new piece of infrastructure in the southern Italian city is set to be formally inaugurated tomorrow (11 September 2025) by the president of Campania, Vincenzo De Luca and EAV president Umberto De Gregorio.

Tour Anish Kapoor’s new Naples station

The project is part of a wider urban and cultural regeneration scheme in the Traiano district of Naples. Not too far away, EMBT, the Barcelona-based architecture studio of Benedetta Tagliabue, recently designed a spectacular timber-framed new subway and train station, Centro Direzionale di Napoli, which opened in 2024.

It is part of a series of new stations for the metropolitan train line that were commissioned in 2004, using the triptych ‘art, architecture and archaeology’ as its motto and including works by Foster + Partners, Massimiliano Fuksas, Álvaro Siza, Dominique Perault, and Karim Rashid.

With Kapoor's project, the design signals strongly a similar desire for a harmonious symbiosis of architecture and art. While, of course, the project is a working building, it also confidently showcases the artist's explorations, which have resulted in world-famous pieces such as Cloud Gate in Chicago.

The new station is clad in weathering steel and features two entrances – each distinct in its look, one smooth and clean-cut, and the other swelling from the ground, hinting at an abstract 'bodily organism'.

Kapoor, referencing three key elements as his starting points – ‘the mythological object, the body and the void’ – and tying the design firmly to its site, said: ‘In the city of Mount Vesuvius and Dante’s mythical entrance to the Inferno, I found it important to try and deal with what it really means to go underground.’

Hugo Marchand and Hannah O’Neill will celebrate the opening of Frieze Seoul 2025 with a performance at Paradise Art Night.

Hosted by Paradise City, the art-entertainment resort next to Seoul's Incheon Airport, the show continues the hotel’s tradition of art happenings, installations, and live events – at last year’s Paradise CIty Frieze party, Pharrell Williams and South Korean rapper G-Dragon hosted a special sale with digital-first auction house Joopiter.

With public area rooms featuring over 3,000 artworks by Yayoi Kusama, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Jeff Koons and KAWS, displayed alongside work by prominent Korean artists Lee Bae, Park Seo-Bo, Kim Hodeuk and Kim Tschang-Yeul, the collection reflects Paradise City’s owner Phillip Chun’s passion for both contemporary and global talent. Ranked amongst ArtNews’ top 200 collectors worldwide, Chun imagines the hotel as both exhibition and gallery. ‘A hub of new Asian modern and contemporary art where Korean and global cultures are brought together.’

Now entering its fourth iteration, Frieze Seoul attracts 120 galleries from all over the world, Paradise City’s launch event this year previews work by America’s Joel Mesler at the hotel’s Art Space gallery, prior to the ballet performance.

This isn’t the first time Marchand and O’Neill have danced to contemporary art. In 2021, they presented an original choreography set among Anselm Kiefer's Field of the Cloth of Gold exhibition at Gagosian's Le Bourget, France. Prior to the event at Paradise Art Night Hugo Marchand will take to the stage at Palais des Papes, Avignon to collaborate with Jean-Michel Othoniel for "Midnight Souls" accompanying the French artist’s OTHONIEL COSMOS or the Ghosts of Love exhibition.

While bringing the French style of ballet to Korea, the dancer says he looks forward to being nurtured and inspired by what he witnesses in Korea. ‘I am very sensitive and depending on where I’m on earth, I feel a very different kind of vibration, touching the trees, ground, and soil,’ says Hugo Marchand. ‘I am looking forward to seeing how I feel in Korea.’

‘It isn’t just what you see, there’s a lot of unseen,’ says Anish Kapoor in Under the Skin, his new documentary directed by Martina Margaux Cozzi. He is referring to the city of Rome, with its multiple layers of history that reveal themselves upon careful examination, but he could also well be talking about his own artistic output.

Filmed in 2016 as Kapoor prepared for a solo exhibition at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma (Macro), the documentary has the artist reflecting on diverse themes including physical and psychological space, the role of the viewer, the merits of repetition and ritual, and of course, the colour red (‘incredibly alive, while speaking to a darkness that we know about ourselves’). Though pitched as ‘a conversation with Anish Kapoor’, the questioner’s voice is absent throughout. All we hear is Kapoor’s unguarded, confessional musings, offering hitherto unseen insights into his creative universe.

The discussion of Rome not only gives geographical context to the documentary, but also segues into the ways in which Kapoor’s work responds to the artistic tradition. He discusses the myth of Marsyas, the satyr who challenged Apollo to a musical duel, lost, and was flayed as punishment. The story is famously portrayed in Titian’s The Flaying of Marsyas, painted in the 1570s. ‘A horrific image, the removal of the skin, the inside becoming the outside,’ describes Kapoor. His own takeover of the Tate Modern Turbine Hall in 2003 was similarly titled Marsyas: three giant steel rings joined together by a dark red PVC membrane, ‘stretched like a skin’.

Beyond mythological allusions, though, Kapoor prefers to avoid prescriptive readings of his work. He acknowledges that it may be understood as a critique of culture or war, but ‘that just ties it up in knots and stifles it. I’d much rather it was work about painting itself’. Of his meat paintings – slabs of protruding resin and silicone that bear a discomforting resemblance to flesh – he says, ‘they may be full of red, they may be full of a kind of visceral body thing, there may be melancholia in them, but I don’t think they are saying anything about the condition of pain.’

While the documentary only shows Kapoor in his London Studio – there are clips showing protective suit-clad technicians working on sculptures, and intricate preparatory drawings on the walls, suggesting the complexities of production – and surveying the exhibition at Macro, there is an interlude at the Church of Santo Stefano Rotundo in Rome, with views of its 16th century frescoes portraying scenes of martyrdom. ‘We are, and I somehow include all of us, religious beings, and religion doesn’t necessarily have to be doctrinal. It can also be about a kind of symbolic continuum that life and all its tragedy seems to keep throwing up. And art finds ways of pointing at that,’ Kapoor narrates, in an introspective moment that lingers in the viewer’s mind long after the documentary is over. 

Though only 23 minutes long, the documentary gives a strong measure of the wisdom that has animated Kapoor and made him into one of the preeminent artists of our time. It also makes clear that this elder statesman is far from resting on his laurels. There is plenty of experimentation to come: ‘I think I’m a teenager, and I mean that, especially as an artist. I’m willing to try almost everything.’

Watch a seven-minute excerpt of Under the Skin – In Conversation with Anish Kapoor. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

INFORMATION
Under the Skin – in conversation with Anish Kapoor is directed by Martina Margaux Cozzi and produced by NSPRD, part of The Aimes and Petite Maison Production. It will have its official release at the Fine Art Film Festival in Venice, California from 8–14 June. veniceica.org

Kapoor showed at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma from 17 December 2016 to 17 April 2017. anishkapoor.com

Anish Kapoor may command multi-million figures at the auction houses but one lucky individual will walk away with a unique artwork by the Turner Prize winner for just £50 this month – and it’s all for a good cause. The latest edition of Secret 7” in London sees a top billing of creative forces – from artists, to illustrators, graphic designers, musicians and filmmakers – create one-off record sleeves that will be sold at the close of exhibition on 24 June, with profits going to mental health charity Mind.

The concept is simple enough: Secret 7” chooses an iconic track from seven artists and presses each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. Contributors create a unique artwork for the track of their choice, with all 700 records exhibited at The Jetty at Greenwich Peninsula. The twist? Buyers won’t know the identity of their sleeve designer until after they’ve purchased their record.

Founded by Kevin King and Jordan Stokes, Secret 7” has raised over £175,000 for charity since it was established in 2012. Previous contributors include Yoko Ono, Ai Weiwei, Gilbert & George, David Shrigley, Julian Opie, and Jenny Holzer. The 2018 roster includes another Turner Prize winner, Jeremy Deller; fashion designer Paul Smith; artists Jake and Dinos Chapman; The Clash bassist Paul Simonon; and set designer Es Devlin.

As for this year’s tracks? It’s a heady set list: I’m Not Down, by The Clash; I Saved The World Today, by Eurythmics; Lover, You Should’ve Come Over, by Jeff Buckley; Castles Made of Sand, by Jimi Hendrix; Help, by London Grammar; No Surface All Feeling, by Manic Street Preachers; and Damaged, by Primal Scream.

The Secret 7” exhibition coincides with a number of happenings in and around Greenwich Peninsula, including a show by illustrator and ‘doodle bomber’ Hattie Stewart (until 25 June), and the Greenwich and Dockands International Festival (22 June – 7 July). ’We want Greenwich Peninsula to be a test-bed for creative ideas, giving emerging  artists and curators freedom to contribute to an ongoing discourse on London’s eclectic cultural scene,’ says Kaia Charles, Greenwich Peninsula cultural projects manager.

We caught up with Secret 7” co-founder Kevin King to find out more...

How did you choose the tracks for this year’s edition?
As with previous years we wanted the line-up to be a mix of styles and time periods – it lends itself to creating a visually diverse show. This year we are working with Sony Music for the first time and challenged ourselves to make the tracks both relatable to our cause, Mind, and ones that haven’t been on a 7” record before.
 
Who can contribute artwork to Secret 7”?
Roughly half the show is made up of people we invite from a range of disciplines. The other half come through an open submission – we had 6,000 artworks sent to us in eight weeks. Jordan (Secret 7” co-founder) and I make all the selections. He lives in Sydney, so we both do it in isolation and then combine our picks, and then refine further.

What’s the strangest submission you’ve received?
Wigs. This year we’ve got our second wiggy sleeve sent to us. We’ve also got a sandcastle, a balloon and a whole range of totally one-off record sleeves. Every year more and more people are taking up the challenge to create their design direct to a blank sleeve rather than a digital submission.

The billing for this year includes some heavyweights – have you ever had to turn down a submission from one?
We’ve never had to turn a big name down before due to numbers, but we have had to decline artwork from one in a previous year as they had included the track title on their work. The rules are rules, for all to follow.
 
You must have some dream contributors and tracks in mind for future editions...
Martin Creed, James Turrell, Olafur Eliasson, Grayson Perry, Jenny Saville, Jesse Kanda, Anthea Hamilton, Lubaina Himid, Michel Gondry… there are plenty to keep up driving on for a few more shows. There are so many dream tracks. We tried and failed for something from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill this year, maybe next time around.
 
Tell us about what visitors can expect on sale day.
A queue. A small bunch of hardcore folks will go overnight, though the majority will arrive early hours on the day itself. We reveal all our secrets that day and any that remain typically get auctioned via the charity's eBay page, which gives those who can't be in London on the day a chance to own our records.

INFORMATION

The 2018 edition of Secret 7” is on view until 24 June. For more information, visit the Secret 7” website and the Greenwich Peninsula website

ADDRESS

The Jetty at Greenwich Peninsula
London SE10 0JF

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Anish Kapoor isn’t South Korean, but his latest group of convex-mirrored 'non-object' towers now on view at Seoul’s Kukje Gallery may reflect more than selfie opportunities. 'This whole context of what’s going on in Korea is quite interesting,' says the British sculptor, who protests 'artists are not pop stars' although he is rather well-revered throughout Korea – even if he has yet to reach the heights of TOP or G-Dragon.

Kukje – which translates as 'international' – is a three-winged gallery campus of architecture ingenuity, public sculpture gardens and a restaurant that ultimately unfurls as South Korea's main hub for the homegrown and global art scene. Kapoor has been showing with the gallery for 'a good many years' and, thanks to them, landed a solo retrospective at the technology-driven Leeum Samsung Museum of Art a few years ago.

But for his latest show, 'Gathering Clouds' – on view in Kukje Gallery's K1 and K3 buildings until the end of October – it opened in time for the art world’s descent onto Korea for the Gwangju, Seoul Mediacity and Busan biennales.'Gallery shows for artists like me are very particular. I have different bodies of work,' explains Kapoor, who additionally showed his trademarked Vantablack voids. 'The great thing about gallery shows, as opposed to institutions, is they there are places where one can try out a body of work.'

What sticks here is media art, which explains why so much of South Korea’s contemporary art scene skews towards the genre. Samsung, Hyundai and LG have prompted the 'Korean Miracle' economic boom, where the peninsular nation now touts the 11th largest global economy, particularly thanks to the areas of technology – a significant achievement considering Korea only became an independent state in 1948. Culturally, that date is the marker for the creation of modern South Korea, and thus the young country's art history is still a largely unwritten tale.

'Korean art history is Nam June Paik, then there is nothing,' says Kukje Gallery founder and director Lee Hyun-sook of the first video artist who rocked the Western world with his use of broadcast media and recordings. Nowadays, tech giants fund contemporary art through their own museums, galleries and prizes, which eventually make their way to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA).

It's an attempt to draw interest from the Korean public. Yet, engagement with art remains murky. Luring large, local crowds to exhibitions is a challenge, as MMCA director Bartomeu Mari explains: 'Art does not belong yet to popular culture. Art can grow a lot.'

However, Kukje Gallery could well be scribing the next chapter of Korean art history, while positioning itself as an essential locale for art seekers. Located in swish Samcheong, the gallery looks outward by showing art stars of the West, including Julian Opie, Ugo Rondinone, and Jenny Holzer, and is working inward towards identifying historical art movements, starting with Dansaekhwa. Hyun-sook says the gallery 'chose Dansaekhwa because there were enough works to spread around to museums and such, but they’re not directly related. From there, there’s a slow connection [between generations of artists] and that’s what we’re trying to build.'

The names currently being collected in South Korea (and the US) include Park Seo-Bo and Ha Chong-Hyun, who both have upcomings shows in New York. Interestingly, alongside headliner Kapoor, Kukje Gallery has hung little known Dansaekhwa painter, Wook-kyung Choi, a woman who slipped through borders to attend the New York School from the early 1960s through late 1970s, flopping her brushes in big strokes à la Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning and Robert Motherwell.

But just as Park and Ha both told us that they reject Western narratives and see themselves as individual artists, Wook did too. It's a point which plays a bigger role in the identity of Korean fine art than has been acknowledged — or exported.

INFORMATION

'Gathering Clouds' runs until 30 October. For more information, visit the Kukje Gallery website.

ADDRESS

54 Samcheong-ro
Sogyeok-dong
Jongno-gu
Seoul
South Korea

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‘I could lose my heart to art,’ says Anya Hindmarch at Sotheby's, where she has curated an edit of ten pieces of contemporary art as part of its Contemporary Curated sale, which coincides with London Fashion Week. ‘My husband laughs at me because he thinks that one day I'll come home with a piece of art that I've remortgaged the house to get.’

Among Hindmarch's selection are pieces by Keith Haring, a neon pink and a black painting that she says she loves for its ‘energy and joy’, a photograph by Thomas Ruff, a large-scale light sculpture by Olafur Eliasson, and other paintings by Tracey Emin, Sam Francis and Anish Kapoor, among others.

‘It was really hard to choose the works. A few of the paintings I really reacted to, and really want on my [own] walls,’ she says. ‘Like the Haring, which I still want desperately, but others, like the Richter, which is a small photograph smeared with paint really grows and grows on you – it's small but so captivating. The Kapoor, with its two white spots, moves and morphs the longer you look at it.’

Hindmarch, who is a trustee of the Royal Academy and the Design Museum, describes herself as a ‘timid’ and ‘small-scale’ collector of art. ‘We operate a one-in-one-out policy at home. I have too many children to feed, house and educate to buy much more,’ she jokes. ‘And then there's a lack of wall space…’

Hindmarch said that she chose the works based on what she'd like to live with. ‘They are just pieces that I loved, that I'd want to have around me; I wasn't trying to think about how they would hang together,’ she says. ‘But, actually, they do work well as a group.’

Sotheby's head of Contemporary Curated London, Joanna Steingold, said the auction house had wanted to invite an inspirational female British tastemaker. Hindmarch, with her patronage and love of art was the perfect candidate. Steingold presented Hindmarch with a short list of about 30 pieces to make the final curated edit of ten.

‘The variety of styles that Anya chose was surprising,’ says Steingold. ‘With the playful mood of her collections, so bright and poppy, I expected her to choose more poppy pieces of art, but pieces like those by Wolfgang Tillmans and Ai Weiwei are very thoughtful and invite you to look twice to discover them.’

The designer said that there was a strong chance that she might walk away for the auction on Tuesday with one of the artworks, which would potentially join her own collection at home.

‘My favourite piece at home is a work by Chris Levine of The Queen with her eyes shut,’ she says. ‘It's hung in the drawing room and my kids are absolutely terrified of it; they're scared that at any moment she could open her eyes.’

Hindmarch's curated edit is the second time Sotheby's has invited a designer to guest curate for the auction. In March, fellow London-based designer Erdem Moralioglu also curated an edit for the Contemporary Curated series, which was first launched in the United States in 2013, and has since featured auctions guest-curated by American author and art collector James Frey, Tamara Mellon, Anna Sui and NFL player Keith Rivers.

But Steingold says that the next edition of the sale will probably see Sotheby's veer away from fashion designers. ‘We want to continue connecting and collaborating with leading tastemakers, and there's a lot of people on my wish list for a potential future guest curator,’ she explains, declining to name her targets, but suggesting that music or architecture could be fields from which they are drawn.

INFORMATION
For more information visit the Sotheby’s website

The pre-sale exhibition is open until Monday 19th September, with the auction scheduled for 10.30am on Tuesday 20th September

When British architect John Pawson was asked to create a museum for The Feuerle Collection, in a Second World War telecommunications base in Kreuzberg, Berlin, he didn’t need much persuading. ‘You’re just awestruck when you come in aren't you?’ he says of the 1942 building, which is his first project in the city. ‘It is just so massive, so monumental, with such a charged atmosphere. This is a building designed by an engineer, who had real taste and an eye for proportion and scale. We didn’t want to change anything here.’

Still, the team has done a huge amount of work to make this two-storey, 6,500 sq m enclosed space a functioning museum. The bunker was specifically designed to protect the telecommunication system during the war; the high-quality concrete walls and ceiling are 2m and 3.5m thick, respectively, and the Allies were unable to penetrate them. ‘Physically it was a big challenge for us’, admits Pawson. 'We had to move slowly to keep our intervention subtle and modest.' In the two years of construction, much time was spent recovering the special texture of the aged concrete surfaces – by removing the plaster on the columns, the graffiti and accumulated dirt on the walls, floors and ceilings.

The chicane at the entrance that once acted as a bomb shield is now a passage leading to a unique experience. Starting from the basement, one enters the Sound Room to a background of minimalist tones and silences created by American composer John Cage. Until you enter the vast main exhibition room there is no natural light and the place is left in near darkness, forcing you to readjust all your senses to negotiate the space. Your eyes are then attracted to the ingeniously curated spotlights and centuries-old stone and wood sculptures from the Khmer Empire that seem to appear from nowhere.

During construction the team encountered flooding problems, as a canal runs next to the building. ‘It was rather beautiful when it was flooded; the columns were mirrored in the water like the cisterns in Istanbul,’ says Pawson. And he decided to keep this accidental art piece, calling it the Lake Room. ‘It is essential to preserve a space like the Lake Room, to let the structure breathe, and not intervene too much,' explains collector and museum founder Désiré Feuerle. ‘In that aspect Pawson is really a master – he shows respect for the building in an elegant way.’

Feuerle also brought to the museum his fascination with Asian incense ceremonies, a spiritual tradition dating back over 2,000 years. Pawson planned the Incense Room on an elevated platform in the basement, that features walls made of two-way mirrors, so one can focus on the peace of the ceremonial room while not losing contact with space outside. A set of incense tables and stools were designed especially for the ceremony, crafted by the last carpenter to master the art of traditional Chinese joinery, in precious African blackwood. They show a hint of Chinese spirit together with the architect’s contemporary minimalist touch.

The museum’s exhibits extend from the 7th century to the present; Imperial Chinese lacquer furniture sitting with contemporary works by artists including Nobuyoshi Araki, Cristina Iglesias, Anish Kapoor and Zeng Fanzhi. When talking about this otherworldly, almost religious experience, Feuerle says: ‘The aim is to have something different. Everything today is so quick, so commercial. I like to support the idea of quality.’ The Feuerle Collection was opened for preview across Gallery Weekend Berlin. It will next host the Berlin Biennale from June to September, and open officially in October.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit The Feuerle Collection’s website

ADDRESS

The Feuerle Collection
Hallesches Ufer 70
10963 Berlin

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Is it a slide... is it a work of art? Or is it a lucrative rescue mission for London’s very expensive Olympic artistic legacy?

'I really like the dirtiness of it and the confusion it creates,' says Carsten Höller, 'that you don’t really know what it is, but that it truly creates a unique experience.'

The artist is talking alongside Anish Kapoor as the first pieces of his new stainless steel slide are pieced together at the base of Kapoor’s own sculpture, the ArcelorMittal Orbit. Last year, the Belgian artist accepted an invitation by Kapoor to wrap a corkscrew slide around the Orbit, created for the 2012 Olympics. Höller accepted, and in June the spindly, steel-framed red scribble in the sky over East London will become the world’s longest, tallest, twistiest slide.

It's nine years since Höller’s Test Site slides delighted audiences in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall. The installation 'experiment' tested audience’s reactions to five different slides. Höller wanted to show that you don’t necessarily get to know a sculpture better by literally travelling through it; that once inside it begins to look like something else entirely. He's also interested in the unique states that humans have when we let go – 'somewhere between delight and madness', as he puts it. 

The Slide, a permanent fixture at London’s Olympic Park, will give people a full 40 seconds to experience this and decide for themselves as they make their way down the 178m chute at an estimated 15mph. 

In a purely formal sense, says Höller, you can see The Slide as 'two spirals' coming together. 'I like to use the term grafting that you use in horticulture – you put one thing on top of another and it starts to grow and function together without becoming totally mixed up,' he says.

It sounds natural and straightforward when put like that, but the reality of seeing the slide, surprisingly slim and elegant with its 60cm diameter and 3mm walls, growing beanstalk-like around Kapoor’s precariously unsymmetrical sculpture, is an undeniably thrilling and intimidating prospect.

Both Kapoor and Höller say they are expecting people to criticise the artwork for being an 'attraction'. They make no secret of the fact that the idea of turning Kapoor’s sculpture and viewing deck into a crowd-pleasing pull was the Mayor of London’s idea. When asked about his inspiration for the artwork, Kapoor replies : 'Boris Johnson – how can I put it – foisted this on the project, and kind of insisted.'

'No artists ever made a fortune from a public sculpture, I can assure you. Isn’t that true?' says Kapoor turning to Höller, who smiles conspiratorially.

'We’re holding out hope for the future.'

INFORMATION

The Slide will open 24 June. For more information, visit the ArcelorMittal Orbit website

Photography courtesy ArcelorMittal Orbit

ADDRESS

ArcelorMittal Orbit
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
London, E20 2ST

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If New Yorkers ‘love’ Times Square it's well-concealed, and more akin to the love/hate theme of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. Anyone who has fought through umbrella-wielding masses as part of their daily commute (dodging ‘naked’ cowboys and shaggy Sesame Street characters) has felt sufficiently defeated err tamed.

And yet, there is a certain magic to this neon square in the city's first snow, or through the eyes of someone seeing it for the first time. It is this Times Square that Collective-LOK recently paid tribute to with their Valentine's Day installation 'Heart of Hearts'.

The reflective pavilion, a band of 12 ten-foot hearts, was the winner of the annual Times Square Valentine Heart Design competition. Among the design's uber-Instagrammable inspirations are works by Jeff Koons and Anish Kapoor.

‘Some of the architectural themes that these precedents bring about for us are reflection, repetition... degrees of privacy and publicity,’ says William O'Brien Jr (Rome Prize Fellowship in Architecture winner, and Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Architecture) who leads the designcollective along with Michael Kubo and Jon Lott.

He adds that ‘the connotations to the sacred’ of the ring shape are inherent (despite whatever urban profanity occurs around it.) 

What set this design apart in the competition was the ability to create intimate spaces while still being open. Every second heart in the ring was four-sided, creating a shield within the chaos to capture a kiss – or maybe just that perfect selfie. 

Rather remarkably, 'My Red Homeland' at Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, is Anish Kapoor’s debut solo show in Russia. Part of the Moscow Biennale, and supported by the Lisson Gallery, the show includes just four pieces: from 1993’s My Body Your Body, a blue black hole in the wall; 2007’s Shelter, a wall mounted sun-cum-giant egg shell; S-Curve, 2006, a curving concave then convex mirror; and My Red Homeland, 2003, a melted red wax wall. But they are handsomely mounted in the centre’s large gallery spaces and, here, less is definitely more. Kapoor’s work demands a lot of empty space and they get it.

Established in 2012, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center has taken over – or rather reclaimed – what was home to the Garage Museum of Art until the move to its OMA-designed space in Gorky Park. Originally the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, designed by Konstantin Melnikov, the building is considered one the best examples of constructivist architecture in Moscow. The garage, then in a neglected state, was ‘gifted’ by the city to the Federation of Jewish Communities in 2001. The group spent the next seven years restoring the building, increasing the interior space to 15,000 sq m, in line with Melnikov’s original master plan, and drafted in London architect Jamie Fobert to work on the design of the new gallery spaces. Given the city’s cavalier approach to its 20th century architectural treasures, it’s a happy miracle that the building has survived and found new purpose.

Rather remarkably, 'My Red Homeland' at Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, is Anish Kapoor’s debut solo show in Russia. Part of the Moscow Biennale, and supported by the Lisson Gallery, the show includes just four pieces: from 1993’s My Body Your Body, a blue black hole in the wall; 2007’s Shelter, a wall mounted sun-cum-giant egg shell;

INFORMATION

’Anish Kapoor: My Red Homeland’ is on view until 17 January 2016

ADDRESS

Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre
Obraztsova Street, 11, build. 1A
Moscow

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Construction crews at 56 Leonard, Herzog & de Meuron’s first high-rise in New York, reached the building’s final height this summer, topping out the 60-storey condominium tower, undoubtedly one of the most anticipated architecture projects in the city. 

The building’s form – a staggered stack of balconies, becoming glassy as windows go in – has become something of a showstopper. Though its overall shape is certainly head-turning and the subject of much social media, the smaller details inside promise to be just as artful. The architects custom-designed everything down to individual tiles, lighting fixtures and kitchen fume hoods, softening up the building’s tough concrete stance with sensual curves and cool colour tones. Much of the building’s shared space – elevator vestibules, a central staircase – will be left with a raw concrete finish, ratcheting up the contrast between the structure of the tower itself and the interiors of the residences.

Each of the tower’s 145 units has its own unique floor plan and will include access to the holy grail of Manhattan real estate: private outdoor space. On floors nine and ten, the architects included two levels of communal space that will include a lounge, a gym, a sundeck and a 23-metre pool, linked together with a concrete spiral stairway. The developers, a partnership between Alexico Group and Hines, also famously commissioned an Anish Kapoor sculpture, which will be wedged into the structure on the ground level, allowing passersby to view the art.

Design aside, one of the project’s most appealing assets will be its unobstructed views. Set in the midst of Tribeca, the tower finds itself surrounded by buildings with strict height limitations due to its designation as a historic district. The building will continue to be clad in glass through the autumn, readying itself for residents – and Kapoor’s sculpture – by 2016.

ADDRESS

56 Leonard
56 Leonard Street
New York

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Anish Kapoor continues his exploration of the sublime by inviting outright controversy and hedonism into the Palace of Versailles. Former residents Sun King Louis XIV and Queen Marie-Antoinette were known for their liberal hedonism and through six works dotted across André Le Nôtre's colossal, obsessively manicured gardens and in the nearby Salle du Jeu de Paume, Kapoor reveals that which lurks in the Chateau's centuries-old shadows.

'Versailles' gardens are like a covering where nature is seen as a perfect sublime object - well it's not,' the British-Indian artist told Wallpaper*. 'It's about politics and power. Louis XIV was very controversial and sexual. And I'm interested in this dialogue, in the juxtaposition.'

Kapoor explores power and the sublime by uncovering, excavating, what's hidden. The pieces form a narrative playing with light in works like 'C-Curve' and 'Sky Mirror,' and darkness in 'Sectional Body preparing for Monastic Singularity' and 'Dirty Corner,' to descent like 'Shooting into the Corner' and 'Descension'. The artist explains, 'I hope the narrative makes viewers feel uncomfortable at times. I'm not interested in commentary though - I'm not trying to say what things mean…The dialogue between the work and place has to remain speculative and poetic. It's about how you relate to it.'

Causing nationwide controversy in a country that reveres Gustave Courbet's explicit painting 'The Origin of the World,' is 'Dirty Corner.' Coined 'the queen's vagina', Kapoor is most excited about this piece and claims its sexuality is a 'non-subject' that cuts the rest of the dialogue short. The 10-metre-high sculpture that resembles a giant rusty foxglove, with its highly phallic stem Kapoor says 'looks as though it's been dug up, discovered by chance, and it's as if it's older than Le Nôtre, like a kind of Mother Goddess!'

On a reflective note Kapoor concludes that 'throughout, I'm most interested in the contradiction though, the idea that what you see isn't quite what you think you see.'

ADDRESS

Place d'Armes
78000
Versailles
France

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An impressive double header opened at London's Lisson Gallery yesterday with new shows from Anish Kapoor and Korean minimalist Lee Ufan.

More than thirty years on from his first exhibition at the gallery, Kapoor presents new giant resin and silicon pieces - not for the squeamish - that blur the boundary between sculpture and painting and look, as much as anything, like panels of mangled, torn and charred flesh; tortured lumps of fat and sinew that lurch out of the wall at you (though recalling at once Rembrandt in their very fleshiness, Bacon in their horror-movie punch and Kapoor's own explosive red wax works). These pieces are not traumatic, they are trauma.

He has been developing these visceral shockers for the last 18 months. And as much as Kapoor has long insisted that he is a painter who is sculptor, as if in trying to do one thing he ended up doing another, they feel like the work of a different artist. Different from the Kapoor of Chicago's Cloud Gate, or the 'Bean' as it has been affectionately tagged. This was a kind of crowd-pleasing minimalism that left you feeling cleaner and calmer after viewing, but now it's as if Sigur Rós has started playing Death Metal.

The odd thing is that becalming, purifying Kapoor is also here in shiny pure shapes and a lovely, almost confectionary pink onyx ovoid. These pieces are also organic and bodily in their way, but womby. As with much of Kapoor's work, they suck you in and spin you round, but in a good way.

Ufan meanwhile is a less-is-more minimalist proper. He helped establish the Mona-Ha movement in Japan in the 1960s, where he is best known, but recent shows at Versailles and the Guggenheim mothership in New York have bolstered his international reputation.

Ufan has created what the Lisson calls a 'quasi-sacred' space to house these new works; an effort, the artist says, to 'lead people's eyes to emptiness and turn their eyes to silence'. Here he has installed four large paintings - carefully composed sweeps of a single colour. In another area a large rock talks, somehow, to a large blank canvas. He is concerned with this kind of material connection. In the gallery's interior courtyard he has set a large rock onto a sheet of glass, a reflective pond that holds steady. 'My work is interior and exterior,' Lee has said, 'interrelating objects and finding the coherences and harmonies'. They are then a pointed contrast to Kapoor's new found dissonance.

ADDRESS

Lisson Gallery
27 & 52 Bell Street
London
NW1 5DA

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They say it's not the winning, but the taking part that counts. Nowhere is this old adage more apt than at the 8th Designs of the Year exhibition at London's Design Museum - a cornucopia of the best design of the last 12 months.

Somehow, despite a leaderboard looming large on the wall and number of big hitter nominees - Frank Gehry, Tesla, Raf Simons - this exhibition, deftly curated by Gemma Curtin, is more playground than battlefield, albeit with a social conscience (think loos for communities without running water or the Waterbank campus, which harvests rainwater as well as providing a education space in Kenya).

The range of the nominees - at times overwhelming - is typical of DOTY (Curtin calls it a 'snapshot of diversity'). Where else could you find a macho machine like the BMW i8, more at home on a competition podium in Gatwick Airport, next to a kaleidoscopically-colored wooden bench by Raw Edges' Endgrain? But despite this, the reassuringly high number of young faces in the line-up serves to remind us that the award is, first and foremost, dedicated to nurturing a certain design zeitgeist - specifically that of pioneering, and often divergent, fresh talent. Marjan van Aubel, with her Current Table or Thomas Tait, with his prismatic AW13/14 collection are just two of note.

To Curtin, the most exciting aspect of this is the eclectic scope with which designers approach the ever-shifting relationship between craftsmanship and advancing technology. While some of the pieces on show actively embrace tech (the enchanting, Escher-like game Monument Valley, for instance), others have connected in different ways, notably through fundraising platforms like Kickstarter. More than five of the projects included began life on Kickstarter, including the Double O bike lights from Paul Cocksedge Studio. It's something Curtin is wholeheartedly behind. 'It's a great way of getting ideas out there and letting the public choose what's important,' she says. And that's it really. Design is here to answer our questions and solve our problems - here are 76 things that do just that.

Address 

Design Museum
Shad Thames
London SE1 2YD

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Art Basel swept into Hong Kong this week sparking a creativity frenzy that spread well beyond the 233 galleries showing in the city’s monolithic convention centre as everyone from up-and-coming young local designers to international galleries and fashion designers jumped on for the ride.

The winners were the public, who were treated to a series of world-class public installations in shopping centres across the city including Zhu Jinshi’s ‘Boat’, an intricate 15x3.5x4.2 metre immersive installation crafted from 10,000 sheets of Xuan paper, presented in Exchange Square.  At Central’s Landmark mall, local art collector and architect William Lim’s suspended plexiglass dome displayed nine important artworks valued at over US$ 19 million including a mesmerising portrait by Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi, while a set of telescopes enabling closer inspection of the works reflected on how contemporary art is viewed.

Across the harbour, the Peninsula Hotel turned tradition on its head with British sculptor Richard Wilson’s full-sized replica of a vintage twin-axel Harrington Legionnaire coach teetering rather alarmingly on the edge of the hotel’s 7th floor terrace. The installation, titled ‘Hang On A Minute Lads…I’ve Got A Great Idea’, replicated the final scene of the iconic film, The Italian Job.

Nearby, the city’s tallest building, the International Commerce Centre, exhibited Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei’s ‘Same Old, Brand New’ light show. Drawing inspiration from 1980s video games, images from Pac-Man and Tetris were projected onto the skyscraper’s futuristic façade.  A smartphone app allowed viewers to hear music while watching.

The city’s growing number of art galleries also upped their game with a stellar showing of works from French graffiti artist and photographer JR who exhibited several ethereal new pieces titled ‘Ghosts of Ellis Island’ at Galerie Perrotin, to Duddell’s ‘ICA Off-Site: Hong Kongese’ that reflected on the pace of urbanisation with a range of works including Shinro Ohtake’s intricate ‘Time Memory’ collage, Zeng Hong’s ‘Balcony’, and a miniature replica of Millie’s Centre Neon Sign courtesy of the M+ visual arts museum.

Meanwhile, in the rapidly gentrifying Sheung Wan district, Pearl Lam’s newest gallery dedicated to emerging artists unveiled an intriguing collection of architectural beeswax installations by the young Beijing artist, Ren Ri.  The beekeeper-artist ‘collaborates’ with bees, manipulating the formation of honeycombs to create organic sculptures and intricate maps of the world.

On the opposite side of Hong Kong island, one of Hong Kong’s strongest alternative art institutions Para Site opened a larger new space in Quarry Bay with ‘One Hundred Years of Shame – Songs of Resistance and Scenarios for Chinese Nations’.  Works include Huang Xiaopeng’s ‘When Harry Met Sally’ light box artwork and Firenze Lai’s hauntingly beautiful ‘Human Chain’ painting.

One of the strongest showings in town, however, was at the Tod Williams and Billie Tsien-designed Asia Society in Admiralty, where Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara’s ‘Life is Only One’ retrospective of paintings, sketches, photographs and installations offered a fascinating glimpse into the notoriously shy artist’s world.

A new satellite event - Art Central - also appeared on the scene this year, targeting a younger crowd with works like Stella Zhang’s all-white hand-sewn space installation for Galerie du Monde and Chinese ink painter Lan Zhenghui’s monumental paintings. The 10,000 square meter harbourfront tent designed by London-based architecture firm Stiff & Trevillion-designed was also home to local architect Joyce Wang’s ultra contemporary take on the traditional crystal chandelier for Swarovski.

Back at Art Basel, now under the direction of Adeline Ooi, visitors found the usual list of big-hitting names such as Anish Kapoor and Grayson Perry, whose ‘Comfort Blanket’ tapestry generated considerable interest on opening night. David Zwirner Gallery, which presented a polychromed wood sculpture of Buster Keaton by Jeff Koons, and several enigmatic paintings by surrealist-realist painter Neo Rauch, also reported very strong sales.

This year, the Fair’s expanded Encounters Sector benefitted significantly from curation by Melbourne art expert Alexie Glass-Kantor who introduced 20 large-scale installations from 14 countries. The most noteworthy was Hong Kong-based artist Joao Vasco Paiva’s ‘Mausoleum’, a 5.6-metre tall installation of ubiquitous marketplace Styrofoam boxes cast in stone resin.

On the VIP Lounge front, Art Basel lead partner UBS went beyond providing a comfortable refuge, exhibiting an eclectic mix of works by Haegue Yang and Wilson Shieh alongside David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Gilbert and George, reinforcing the strong Japanese and Korean presence this year.

Sculptural highlights included young Korean artist Myeongbeom Kim's striking deer and Paolo Pivi’s shocking pink-feathered polar bear.  The ultimate crowd-pleaser, however, proved to be Japanese artist Shintaro Miyake who, perched on a Sori Yanagi-designed Elephant Stool, treated visitors to a live wall drawing performance.

'Millie's Centre Neon Sign (miniature replica)' was another highlight at Duddell's. Courtesy of M+, West Kowloon Cultural District

ADDRESS

Art Basel Hong Kong 2015 was at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre, 1 Expo Drive, Wan Chai, Hong Kong

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To create the vast new maison, Peter Marino entirely reworked the original store - also designed by him - and fused it with what was Donna Karan, next door. ’I had to destroy my own baby,’ he says. The two spaces are united by white Portland stone, double height windows and Louis Vuitton’s signature golden mesh cladding. Says Marino: ’I could barely touch the historic facade, so I knocked everything inside down instead...’

Louis Vuitton's epic new London 'maison' has just opened its doors on New Bond Street. Entered via a bridge over a 'moat', its four outrageously luxurious floors include a VIP apartment, a 'librairie' of limited edition art and art books, revolving handbag installations and artworks by all the big guns, from Damien Hirst to Gilbert & George. You name it, this store's got it. Here, the architect behind this temple to luxury - Peter Marino - takes us on a tour.

'I spent five years pouring my heart into making the Champs-Élysées store have all the bells and whistles, only to be told that the London maison had to be even better,' says Marino.

This new, 1,500 sq m palace certainly gives the flagship maison a run for its money, pioneering a number of firsts for Louis Vuitton, including the VIP apartment. It's also London's largest single-brand store.

Here, the brand is even commissioning and selling limited-edition artworks by the likes of Anish Kapoor and Gary Hume. But more of that in Wallpaper's July issue...

To enter the store, visitors step across a bridge, which separates the inner building from the facade. Below it is a glass staircase, illuminated by LEDs that will show constantly changing film and artistic animations. 'I've created a kind of "moat"', says the American designer. 'But it's a virtual one, not the kind that apparently costs vast sums to clean, like your MPs''. Asked if he sees a 'moat' as something quintessentially English, Marino replies, 'Didn't you all live in castles when you were kids?'

Cross over the bridge and you come to an installation of vintage trunks suspended in the air. This is backed by a bronze mesh, whose pattern is based on the flowers of the monogram handbag, which wraps the entire store. 'It involved very difficult workmanship,' explains Marino. 'The Nottingham-based company that made it had to make thousands of samples to get it right, because it's about 30ft high and heavy as hell. The first one was like chainmail but in the end it came out light and scintillating. It filters the light and moves like a curtain'.

One of the many firsts that this store pioneers for the Louis Vuitton network is the placing of the most expensive pieces bang opposite the entrance. This store isn't scared of scaring customers away with its price tags. 'It's a bit experimental and risk-taking. But this is New Bond Street,' Marino exclaims. 'The theory is that the customer here is somewhat immune to the vagaries of the market.'

The fine jewellery, watches and best bags are displayed in an intimate area, with lacquered wall panelling and partitions clad in dark woven copper, linen and wool. 'This was my way of responding architecturally to the gorgeous materials of the bags.'

'I call this the "girls just want to have fun" part of the store, because everything is moving. It's really hilarious,' says Marino. The costume jewellery zone, to the far left of the store, marks the entrance to a room filled with moving bags and scarves. Two LV-branded planets orbit around ceiling inspired by Saturn's rings. On a plinth stands Kiki - a sculpture by long-time Vuitton collaborator, Takashi Murakami.

Here, customers can sit on stools and pick their bags like they would a cocktail, from a back-lit, rotating display. 'When I was parading round all the other shops that are heavy on handbags I felt this lethal lack of energy,' explains the architect. 'I couldn't give the bags any artificial stimulation so I thought, let's get them moving.'

Even the sun-like light that shines through the central oculus of the sunglasses area moves up and down. 'Dichroic glass constantly changes the light that hits your eyes, ergo, creating the need to put sunglasses on,' says Marino. 'Pedro likes to get paid, you know...'

The first floor is home to the latest womenswear collections. The three ready-to-wear zones have different moods to draw out different aspects of the collections, decorated in varying tones of French embossed leather and light French lacquer. This floor is also home to the librairie, sculptures by the likes of Damien Hirst and an area for temporary exhibitions.

If you're lucky enough to get the nod, a security-controlled lift will whisk you up to the invitation-only inner sanctum of the store - the VIP 'apartment'. The open plan space can be sectioned off into suites, and features artworks, including this piece titled 'The Bible cowboys' by Richard Prince, and others by the likes of Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hans Hartung, and Bertrand Lavier. 'I designed it like a Peter Marino apartment,' says the architect, putting his feet up on the table. When we venture that we could happily live here, he replies: 'I'd like to have sex here.'

There are fireplaces, rare antiques, lacquered doors and all the carpets are one off mixtures of silk and wool, designed by Marino himself. Says the architect: 'I call it VIP on steroids. But I also wanted it to feel like a space where you can hang.'

The plan for a VIP space was hatched only 14 months ago - a response to a growing trend in luxury stores in China. "The feedback from the brands who created them in China was a revelation. They make as much profit from these areas as they do out of all the selling floors,' Marino explains. So he put the idea to Louis Vuitton. 'They said, "Okay Peter, go ballistic. We're going to try this." Quite frankly speaking, it's an experiment. I've never done this for a brand in the West before.'

Here, custom-made furniture by Marino sits alongside a chair by French sculptor Philippe Hiquily.

Descend the LED-lit staircase to the lower-ground floor and you'll find the men's universe, comprising various areas, such as the leather goods zone, the shoes area and the men's club. Darker finishes give it an aptly masculine feel and walls are clad in wood veneer.

Dominated by a giant 2005 artwork by Gilbert & George, the space is filled with relaxing sofas and low tables, once again like a private apartment. 'Because I began my career creating high end luxury residences - for the likes of Yves St Laurent, the Rothschilds - before I became a retail architect, I'm able to bring to the stores a high end sense of how the customer lives,' he explains. Throughout the new maison you'll find unusual furniture from auctions and dealers, including tables by Roland Mellan and John Ashpool.

ADDRESS

17 - 20 New Bond Street
London W1

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