Anish Kapoor's ‘Descent into Limbo (1992)’ at the Fundação de Serralves, Museum of Contemporary Art in Portocourtesy of Fundação de Serralves, Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto

A man has fallen into an Anish Kapoor artwork and ended up in hospital

A literal ‘Descent into Limbo’

A man has ended up in hospital after falling into one of British artist Anish Kapoor’s installations at the Serralves museum in Porto.

The now ironically-titled “Descent into Limbo (1992)” is comprised of a cubic building with a circular hole in the center of its floor, which visitors can walk around. The sides of the hole are coated with a black pigment to give the impression of an infinite space, but the hole itself is (luckily) only 2.5 metres deep. Admittedly, that’s still a pretty long way to fall, given that it’s almost 1.5 times the height of an average European man.

Though the visitor – reportedly an approximately 60 year old Italian man – was hospitalised by the fall, a spokesperson for the Serralves museum said that he is “almost ready to return home”. The artwork, despite adhering to security protocol and having warning signs, is temporarily closed while the museum assesses what happened, but there are hopes that it will be reopened “in a few days”.

The exhibition that “Descent into Limbo” is a part of – Anish Kapoor: Works, Thoughts, Experiments – is the artist’s first major show in Portugal, and runs until January 6, 2019. Just mind the big hole.

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