In the Black Fantastic review – spectacular from first to last

‘A future-shock time warp’: Sedrick Chisom, Medusa Wandered the Wetlands of the Capital Citadel Undisturbed By Two Confederate Drifters Preoccupied by Poisonous Vapors That Stirred in the Night Air, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London Photograph: Photo: Mark Blower/Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London

An extraordinary sight opens this show: giant chains cascading all the way down from the double-height ceiling, vast as the links behind Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the famous photograph. But these are black and cast from human forearms. Each hand is propping up the next elbow – or so it seems. Look up and they appear to be rising, helping each other forge upwards. Look down, however, and they are clinging to each other and falling, lying like manacles on the ground.

The nuances of striving and suffering are endless, and irreducible. Chain Reaction invokes black history more powerfully than any sculpture I have ever seen. It is by the American artist Nick Cave, born in Missouri in 1959, a visionary of dazzling versatility.