Yayoi Kusama: Look Now, See Forever

Venue: Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
Dates: 19 November 2011 - 11 March 2012
Cost: Free
Click on the images for a larger view

Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art opens a major solo exhibition of new and recent works by leading senior Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama, as one of several programs marking the 5th anniversary of the opening of the building.

Queensland Art Gallery Director Tony Ellwood said Yayoi Kusama: Look Now, See Forever from November 19 to March 11, 2012, would include sculpture, painting and installations that show the most recent developments in the artist’s work.

‘The exhibition will include Flowers that bloom at midnight, a garden composed of four towering, vibrantly coloured sculptures, set against a backdrop of Kusama’s sublimely detailed abstract paintings,’ he said. ‘It will also feature two Reach Up to the Universe, Dotted Pumpkin installations, featuring shiny aluminium, two-metre-tall pumpkins whose reflections are distorted by a profusion of convex mirrors.

‘Dots Obsession is an intense, immersive colour installation, featuring an explosion of polka dots over red walls, floors, ceilings and giant balloons, with carefully calibrated mirrors creating the illusion of infinite space,’ Mr Ellwood said.

‘Complementing these new directions will be the artist’s popular interactive project The Obliteration Room, last staged for the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 2002, in which visitors will fill the completely white room with a plethora of multi-coloured polka dots.’

Mr Ellwood said the exhibition had come out of the Gallery’s long-term engagement with Yayoi Kusama and was developed in direct collaboration with the artist and her studio.

‘Many Queenslanders would be already familiar with Kusama through the major focus on her work in APT in 2002 – which included her installations Narcissus Garden (1966/2002) and Soul Under the Moon (2002). Both of these works in the Gallery’s collection were recently featured in 21st Century: Art in the First Decade at GoMA.

‘Since the 1950s, Yayoi Kusama has brought her unique worldview, style and processes to an increasingly broad range of media.

‘With a practice that has encompassed performance, film-making, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, fashion, poetry, fiction and public spectacles, she remains one of the most exciting and prolific artists working today,’ he said.

Her influence on generations of artists is widely acknowledged, and now in her early 80s her ever-vibrant and consistently surprising work continues to captivate audiences worldwide. ‘Through this exhibition at GoMA audiences will encounter a series of large-scale and immersive installations in a play of colour, light and form that will be presented for the first time in Australia

‘The exhibition will be complemented by a range of public programs and an online platform documenting the progress of The Obliteration Room.

Yayoi Kusama is currently the subject of a major retrospective organised by Tate Modern and touring to the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

For more information on Yayoi Kusama: Look Now, See Forever please visit the QAG's exhibition page.

Image: Yayoi Kusama - Flowers that bloom at midnight (detail) 2010
Fiberglass reinforced plastic, urethane paint
Installation view at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles
Collection: The artist | © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.
Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery/Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo