Serlachius: Anish Kapoor

A major exhibition by Anish Kapoor, one of the world’s most renowned contemporary artists, has opened at the Serlachius Museums in Mänttä, Finland.

Kapoor has created a new exhibition for Serlachius centred around a completely new, site-specific work. Originally scheduled to open earlier, the exhibition was postponed until June 2026. Expectations have been high: according to the artist’s studio, the aim is to create a work with no precedent in Kapoor’s previous practice.

According to Pauli Sivonen, Director of Serlachius, the exhibition has been several years in the making, developed in close collaboration with Kapoor and his London studio. Rather than a retrospective, the exhibition focuses on the artist’s most recent work and new directions in his practice.

The opening galleries feature Kapoor’s renowned Vantablack works. The extremely light-absorbing coating renders the forms almost invisible, creating the illusion of black voids that challenge the viewer’s perception of space and reality. The exhibition also includes large-scale paintings in intense shades of red, in which Kapoor explores tensions between birth and death, the internal and external, and beauty and horror.

The exhibition’s most anticipated work, however, remains partly concealed. A monumental piece created specifically for Mänttä will occupy the main gallery at Serlachius Manor, filling almost the entire exhibition space. Its scale is such that the museum’s floor structures have had to be reinforced to support its weight. True to Kapoor’s approach, the work makes full use of the gallery’s architectural potential, spanning 600 square metres and reaching 11 metres in height.

The scale of Kapoor’s work has increasingly approached the architectural over the course of his career. Transporting the works to Mänttä requires no fewer than 13 trucks, compared with three for his 2001 exhibition at Helsinki’s Kunsthalle.

The year 2026 is significant for Kapoor in other respects as well. His work is simultaneously being exhibited at institutions including the Hayward Gallery in London and Palazzo Manfrin in Venice. The Serlachius exhibition places Mänttä on the international contemporary art map and offers Finnish audiences a rare opportunity to encounter the recent work of one of the most influential artists of our time.

Kapoor’s exhibition will be on view at Serlachius until April 2027.