20181019_164832

Artist: Yayoi Kusama

Title:Pumpkin (DRZRZ)

Year: 2018

Dimension: 130.3 X 162

Technique: Acrylic on Canvas

Price: TBC

About the Artist

Yayoi Kusama‘s work has transcended two of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century: pop and minimalism. Her highly influential career spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures, which allude at once to microscopic and macroscopic universes.

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama’s work has been featured widely in both solo and group presentations. She presented her first solo show in her native Japan in 1952. In the mid-1960s, she established herself in New York as an important avant-garde artist by staging groundbreaking and influential happenings, events, and exhibitions. Her work gained widespread recognition in the late 1980s following a number of international solo exhibitions, including shows at the Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England, which both took place in 1989. She represented Japan in 1993 at the 45th Venice Biennale to much critical acclaim.

Major touring surveys include those organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2000); National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2004); and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2008). Her work was the subject of a large-scale and well-received retrospective, which traveled from 2011 to 2012 to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. From 2012 through 2015, three major museum solo presentations of the artist’s work, Eternity of Eternal EternityA Dream I Dreamed, and Infinite Obsession simultaneously traveled to major museums throughout Japan, Asia, and Central and South America—all of which drew record-breaking attendances. In 2015, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark organized a comprehensive overview of Kusama’s practice, including works that span the full length of her career. The show traveled to Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Helsinki Art Museum. In 2017, The National Art Center in Tokyo hosted My Eternal Soul, a solo exhibition featuring over 130 paintings from the artist’s series of the same title, which she began in 2009, as well as works that span her entire career.

Text taken from www.davidzwirner.com

What does this work say (to me)?

It is a celebration of life for me.

It makes me think of Alice in Wonderland, it makes me smile and it surprises me in its perfection and the obsessive mind that is behind its creation.

A mind that won’t let go appreciation, that won’t let go beauty; a mind so clear in its purpose of portraying the magic of life.

From the perspective of transforming a day to day object into an item to be celebrated, to be focused on plus the use of bright colors this work steps into the territory of Pop art but there is something else on this painting, there is a code, there is a key in its presence and organization of elements. This is why I perceive it as the outcome of a very peculiar mix between pop art, opt art and symbolism.

Yes, as any appreciation of art can be, probably I’m being taking too far away from what it is but this interpretation is the closest explanation of what seduces me on this painting.

Kusama has been working for decades using dots from different angles, different expressions including performances, so the repetitive use of the element that defines this work is a very important part of her vocabulary.

What I want to communicate through my posts is not an academic interpretation of a painting or art work (talking in more generic terms) but what is there that speaks to me and hopefully conveying that feeling which is a not pure feeling but one tinted by ideas, visions, concepts, all in one.

The idea of infinite, the idea of an object in an organized space, the idea of an ulterior harmony and balance, the idea of peace, joy in every object that surrounds us as a possibility of interpretation and choice gives us hope and limitless reasons for being happy and appreciative.

This is why this work makes me smile, and why I want it to be the last post of 2018 getting ready for a 2019 of expectation, love, art, interiors and the magic of creation.

In what Room to place it?

In any room but the bedroom, at least you want to have an overdose of joy so you won’t sleep. J

Displaying it

I think is very important in this work to keep the painting at eye level, those dots can play with your brain if additionally you add a distorted perspective to the equation.

I would uses warm light and if framing it I would use a box frame.