ART-PRESENTATION: Yayoi Kusama-Where the Lights in My Heart Go

Throughout her career, Yayoi Kusama has developed a practice, which, though it shares affiliations with movements such as Surrealism, Minimalism and Pop Art, resists any singular classification. Yayoi Kusama became well known in the Avant-Garde world for her provocative happenings and exhibitions. Since then Kusama’s extraordinary artistic endeavours have spanned painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, performance, film, printmaking, installation and environmental art as well as literature, fashion and product design.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Aspen Art Museum Archive

For nearly seventy years, Yayoi Kusama has focused on themes of eternity, the sublime, and the cosmos. Her paintings, sculptures, performances, and installations are characterized by an obsessive application of patterns inspired by vivid childhood hallucinations that blended her perception of herself and the world around her. She imagines that by covering objects with this repetitive dot motif, they will “self-obliterate and return to the nature of the universe”. Kusama began her renowned “Infinity Mirror Rooms” series in the early 1960s. These immersive environments use mirrors to create the dizzying effect of an expansive, never-ending space. One of Kusama’s iconic rooms, “Where the Lights in My Heart Go” (2016), is installed at the Aspen Art MMuseum. Kusama’s “Where the Lights in My Heart Go” (2016) is a 300 x 300 cm polished stainless-steel room with a mirrored interior. Small holes in the walls and ceiling allow natural light to penetrate the darkened room. Multiplied by the reflective mirrored surfaces, these pinholes of light create an immersive kaleidoscopic experience inside the room. Its mirrored exterior creates the illusion of a continuously expanding universe, toying with our sense of visual perception. Yayoi Kusama had a breakthrough in 1965 when she produced “Infinity Mirror Room-Phalli’s Field”. Using mirrors, she transformed the intense repetition of her earlier paintings and works on paper into a perceptual experience. Over the course of her career, the artist has produced more than 20 distinct “Infinity Mirror Rooms”, ranging from peep-show-like chambers to multimedia installations, each of Kusama’s kaleidoscopic environments offers the chance to step into an illusion of infinite space. The rooms represent different stages of Kusama’s five-decades-long career. Some rely on playful props, such as glowing ceramic pumpkins and soft sculptures of red-and-white phalli. Others use LED lights to evoke vast star fields that practically cause the visitor to disappear when wearing dark colours. And, yes, the fragmented reflections are more affecting when viewed with the naked eye than through a phone screen. The rooms also provide an opportunity to examine the artist’s central themes, such as the celebration of life and its aftermath.

Info: Aspen Art Museum, 637 East Hyman Avenue, Aspen, Duration: 20/12/19-10/5/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.aspenartmuseum.org