Void Pavilion

Descent into Limbo, an installation by Anish Kapoor first shown in 1992 at documenta 9 in Kassel and then, in 1998, at the Fundação de Serralves, provided the basis for Void Pavilion, a new installation conceived and produced by the artist for "The Assault of Illusion”.

The sensation of emptiness caused by a bottomless pit brings the aesthetic experience closer to the idea of the sublime. The installation places us in a limbo between the spatial judgement of what we see and the aesthetic judgement of that apparent emptiness, the limits of which our imagination cannot grasp. Thus, faced with this optical effect, the imagination, unable to make a judgement, is frustrated. The image appears to us as an abyss that provokes a flight of the imagination and yet, because of its relationship with the infinite, it fascinates and traps us.

“The role of fantasy [is to] mediate between the formal symbolic structure and the positivity of objects we encounter in reality – that is to say, it provides a 'schema' according to which certain positive objects in reality can function as objects of desire, filling in the empty places opened up by the formal symbolic structure. [...] how do I know that I desire a strawberry cake in the first place? This is what fantasy tells me" (Slavoj Žižek).

This fantasy is built by means of a culture that will only manage to illusion us, that will only manage to fascinate us if it is sustained by the most advanced techniques to which, of course, we do not have access. The piece thus confronts us, at the same time, with the question of the ownership of its technical mechanisms: the visual construction of the void is made possible by Vantablack, a carbon nanotube pigment that Kapoor patented, and as such, he is the only one authorised to use it. The very materiality of the piece highlights the technical mechanisms that sustain the poetic construction and the relationship with economic and legal forms that make them possible.

Credits
    

Anish Kapoor
Void Pavilion 2026
Fibreglass, paint
300 × 300 × 190 cm
Artist's inventory no: WD102831

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor lives and works in London and Venice (Italy). Born in Bombay in 1954, he is internationally recognised as one of today's leading contemporary artists. Renowned for works that are both formal explorations and interventions in public space, such as Cloud Gate (2004) in Chicago and the Monte Sant'Angelo subway station (2025) in Naples, Kapoor moves between very different scales across multiple series of work. His architectural works, sculptures and paintings are exhibited in museums and public spaces around the world. 

www.anishkapoor.com