FROM 4 DEC '27 to 7 MAY '28 | Kunsthal Rotterdam will present a major exhibition by Anish Kapoor from 4 December 2027 to 7 May 2028. Filling HALL 2 with monumental sculptures and installations, the exhibition explores perception, materiality, colour and the uneasy relationship between what we can see and what seems to disappear from view.
A total experience in HALL 2
Anish Kapoor's work often begins with something apparently simple: a reflective surface, an intense field of colour or a sculptural form. Look longer, however, and those objects can become much harder to understand.
At Kunsthal Rotterdam, Kapoor will create what the museum describes as a total experience in HALL 2. Monumental sculptures and installations will transform the gallery, using scale, reflection, colour and space to challenge the way visitors perceive their surroundings.
The exhibition places particular emphasis on the tension between the visible and the invisible. Reflective forms can distort the architecture around them, while voids appear to swallow space and highly saturated pigments can seem almost to absorb light.
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When objects refuse to behave normally
A recurring quality in Kapoor's work is the uncertainty created by apparently solid objects. A polished surface can suddenly make a room feel unstable, while an opening or dark space can appear far deeper than it physically is.
That uncertainty is central to the Kunsthal exhibition. Visitors will be confronted with works that have a strong physical presence while simultaneously resisting an easy reading of their shape, depth or material.
Colour, reflection and illusion
Kapoor uses colour as more than decoration. Intense pigments can change how an object appears to occupy space, while reflective materials pull the surrounding room, architecture and viewer into the work itself.
The result is an experience in which looking becomes part of the artwork. Depending on where you stand, a sculpture may appear to expand, flatten, invert or partly disappear.
Kunsthal describes this relationship as a tension between the physical impact of Kapoor's works and something more elusive that continually escapes the viewer's gaze.
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Testing the boundaries of materiality
The exhibition also focuses on Kapoor's interest in what materials can make us believe. His sculptures may look heavy, weightless, hollow or impossibly deep, even when the physical object in front of us suggests otherwise.
By playing with these contradictions, Kapoor turns questions about material into questions about perception. What appears solid may feel uncertain, while emptiness can acquire a physical presence of its own.
That paradoxical approach is at the heart of the Rotterdam exhibition, which aims to challenge not just what visitors see, but how confidently they can trust what they are seeing.
When to see Anish Kapoor
The Anish Kapoor exhibition runs from 4 December 2027 to 7 May 2028 in HALL 2 at Kunsthal Rotterdam.
