ART-PRESENTATION:Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama has shaped her own narrative of postwar and contemporary art. Minimalism and Pop art, abstraction and conceptualism coincide in her practice, which spans painting, sculpture, performance, room-sized and outdoor installations, the written word, films, fashion, design, and architectural interventions.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive

On view in her new exhibition entitled “Give Me Love”, in two spaces, 519 and 525 West 19th Street, of David Zwirner Gallery in N. York, are paintings from the celebrated “My Eternal Soul” series, new polka-dotted pumpkin sculptures, and the artist’s seminal installation “The Obliteration Room” from 2002. Yayoi Kusama continues her recent series of large-format, square “My Eternal Soul: paintings with a group of canvases conveying extraordinary vitality and passion. With titles such as “Fear of Youth Overwhelmed by the Spring Time of Life”, “I Who Have Taken an Antidepressant”, and “My Longing, the Unseen Land of Death”, the compositions acquire an autobiographic, even confessional dimension. The bold brushstrokes and swirly shapes seem to hover between figuration and abstraction, vibrant, animated, and intense, they transcend their medium to introduce their own pictorial logic, at once contemporary and universal. As such, while they continue Kusama’s innovative exploration of form, subject matter, and space, they also represent a connection to her work from the past six decades. The sculptures on view include new stainless steel pumpkins featuring either painted or perforated dots. Their exaggerated sizes, the tallest being approximately 178 cm high, seem measured after human proportions, and their mirrored surfaces are thus able to contain viewers’ full body reflections. The exhibition marks the United States debut of “The Obliteration Room”, an all-white, domestic interior that over the course of the show is covered by dots of varying sizes and colors by the viewers.

Ιnfo: Give Me Love, David Zwirner Gallery, 519 West 19th Street & 525 West 19th Street, New York, Duration: 9/5-13/6/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 10:00-18:00, www.davidzwirner.com