Kapoor argues that the enormity is not only physical but can also be emotional and spiritual.

In the 1980s, Anish Kapoor caught the art world's attention with his clean, curved sculptures covered with brightly colored pigments. Kapoor's works often evoke the immaterial as well as the spiritual. The artist often addresses the question of how to remove the traces of the individual as well as the traces of production. His works do not show rigid features but rather occupy an illusory space, which resonates with Eastern theologies of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Einstein's view of a non-three-dimensional spatial world.

Through his work, Kapoor often proposes and plays with the notions of duality such as solidity and emptiness, reality and mirror image, body and spirit, here and there, heaven and earth, etc. These paradoxical concepts create contradictions between the internal and external, the apparent, and the inherent, the conscious and the unconscious, placing the audience in an "in-between" state.

Cloud Gate, one of Kapoor's masterpieces of public sculpture, later affectionately known as "The Bean" based on its shape, is located in Chicago's Millennium Park and has become an iconic Chicago landmark since its completion in 2006. The 20-meter-long, 13-meter-wide, 10-meter-high sculpture is made of 168 stainless steel plates and weighs 100 tons. Inspired by mercury, the sculpture's smooth surface reflects and distorts Chicago's urban skyline. The viewer stands under the sculpture, where the substantial space is transformed into a liquid by the smooth stainless steel surface, creating a unique experience of multiple mirrors. The work is also extremely popular with visitors because of its photogenic qualities. Some art critics consider Cloud Gate to be one of the world's most remarkable pieces of public art. It made multiple appearances in films, such as the 2011 Hollywood feature, Source Code, as its thematic metaphor, Cloud Gate appeared in the film's opening and closing scenes.

Kapoor is acclaimed for creating urban spectacles with large-scale artworks. In 2007, he presented an edition of Sky Mirror for the Rockefeller Center in New York, which measures 11-meters tall and 29 tons; a concave surface made of stainless steel faces the Rockefeller Center courtyard, while its upward and tilted cavity reflects the skyscrapers and the vicissitudes of the sky. Its protruding side faces Fifth Avenue, the work dramatically distorts its surroundings' visuality, providing the viewer with an experience from vertigo light and architectural forms.

Leviathan, presented in Paris, France in 2011, is another outstanding work by Kapoor and believed by many art lovers as one of the most influential works of art in history. Measuring 100 meters long, 72 meters wide, and 34 meters high, the massive PVC sculpture almost fills the entire nave of the neo-classical style Grand Palais. The curvatures of the piece present a sharp contrast with the cruciform structure of the building. Leviathan took its name from the biblical god Goliath. It was later referred to by political philosopher Thomas Hobbes as a gigantic state. In contrast, Kapoor argues that the enormity is not only physical but can also be emotional and spiritual. The viewer can experience the work from the outside as well as from the inside. As the one enters the work, sunlight penetrates the building's steel and glass structure, leaving a projection on a PVC "shell" that turned red with the light, and over time, as if one is inside of a living beast.

As with all of Kapoor's work, Descension, presented to the public at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York in 2017, is the fruit of an intensive study of materials and transformation processes. The spiraling water is staged in a startling fashion. The black water in the eight diameters pond gyrates and forms a whirlpool, creates a deafening roar. The black abyss at the center gives the impression that the water is being sucked into the depths of the earth or a known mysterious space. On the one hand, the artist's presentation draws resonance and intrigue from the work's physical presence; on the other hand, provokes the viewers' imagination and thinking about society and human existence.

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Perhaps most famous for public sculptures that are both adventures in form and feats of engineering, Kapoor manoeuvres between vastly different scales, across numerous series of work. Immense PVC skins, stretched or deflated; concave or convex mirrors whose reflections attract and swallow the viewer; recesses carved in stone and pigmented so as to disappear: these voids and protrusions summon up deep-felt metaphysical polarities of presence and absence, concealment and revelation. Forms turn themselves inside out, womb-like, and materials are not painted but impregnated with colour, as if to negate the idea of an outer surface, inviting the viewer to the inner reaches of the imagination. Kapoor’s geometric forms from the early 1980s, for example, rise up from the floor and appear to be made of pure pigment, while the viscous, blood-red wax sculptures from the last ten years – kinetic and self-generating – ravage their own surfaces and explode the quiet of the gallery environment. There are resonances with mythologies of the ancient world – Indian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman – and with modern times.