Descend into the Underworld via Anish Kapoor's Sculptural Subway Station Entrances

"West of Naples, along the Tyrrhenian coast, sits the storied Lake Avernus. Situated in a volcanic crater, its Latin name is synonymous with hell or the underworld, and to the ancient Romans, it was considered the portal to Hades. Dante Alighieri echoed the belief in his seminal Inferno. More recently, Anish Kapoor set out to explore the notion in a striking new entrance to the Monte Sant'Angelo subway station in central Naples."

""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," the artist says. Kapoor is renowned for large-scale sculptures and installations that tap into visceral psychological experiences, from a perpetually swirling whirlpool of black water in "Descension" to a meat-like slab of wax being wedged through a doorway in "Svayambhu," which references a Sanskrit word meaning "self-born.""

""At Monte Sant'Angelo station, three integral themes of Kapoor's practice have coalesced in more potent form than ever: the mythological object, the body, and the void," a statement says. The artist's design for two separate entrances, initiated more than two decades ago, tap into his interest in dualistic relationships like internal and external experiences or lightness and darkness. Kapoor's two entrances exist in dialogue with one another, as one is made from weathered steel with a rusty patina that suggests an amorphous bodily form."

Lake Avernus lies west of Naples in a volcanic crater and carried ancient Roman associations as a portal to Hades and the underworld. Dante located a mythical entrance to the Inferno in the same landscape. Anish Kapoor created a new pair of entrances for Monte Sant'Angelo subway station that engage the idea of going underground and the city's volcanic history. Kapoor's work often evokes visceral psychological experiences through monumental forms, such as Descension and Svayambhu. The two station entrances manifest his recurring themes of the mythological object, the body, and the void, presenting weathered, amorphous steel opposite a smooth tubular inverse in dialogue with architecture.

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