The German artist’s new exhibition at the White Cube in Bermondsey is as monumental as ever.

Imposing. Overwhelming. Desolate. Stirring. You could search for many words to describe the work of the German artist Mr Anselm Kiefer, but nothing quite measures up to the experience of standing in front of it. This much is clear to see at _Walhalla, _Mr Kiefer’s new exhibition at the White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, London, which brings together an awe-inspiring collection of recent sculptures, installations and monumental paintings that explore themes from Norse mythology, and its vision of time as an endless cycle of creation and destruction.

If this sounds somewhat heavy, it is. Not just because of the sheer mass and weight of these pieces – many of the paintings are more than five metres across while the towering spiral staircase of sculpture “Sursum corda” reaches all the way to the ceiling of the giant space – but because of their emotional heft. Mr Kiefer’s mystical world is one of derelict, monstrous architecture, forgotten artefacts (displayed like curiosities in giant glass vitrines) and boiling, chaotic textures, carved and sculpted into his canvases with three-dimensional globs of oil paint, shellac, clay and more. Throughout his career he has interrogated history as a collection of uncomfortable truths, particularly in regards to Germany, his homeland, and the legacy of its actions during WWII. Here, this decades-long story continues – the subject matter is, ultimately, paradise, but the impression is of a dead world that has been pillaged and left behind.

Writing in The Guardian in 2015, Nobel Prize-winning author Mr Orhan Pamuk described Mr Kiefer as an essentially “literary” artist, and it’s clear to see why when so many works here are imbued with quiet narratives. In the central installation of Walhalla, a long dark corridor of dishevelled hospital beds sculpted in lead are each inscribed with a name of someone important to the artist. Another sculpture close by depicts a bed frame adorned with wings, apparently attempting to take off, but with a giant rock placed in its centre, holding it down. If it’s despairing, it’s also hopeful, everything you look at a beginning and an ending at the same time. This harsh, but lyrical world will appeal to anyone who visited the artist’s major retrospective at the Royal Academy in 2014, and a visit is highly recommended before it closes in February 2017. Just one word of warning: do not touch – you’ll not only be scowled at by the assistants, but, seeing as most of the work is rendered in lead, be thoroughly poisonous by the time you leave.

Anselm Kiefer: Walhalla, is at the White Cube, Bermondsey, from 23 November to 12 February 2017