Yayoi Kusama
Starting with painting, Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Matsumoto, Japan) expresses ideas in her work such as the obliterating of the distinction between the artwork, the artist and life. Developing environment concepts from the principle of the serial all-over, she formulates approaches that were later taken up again by feminist art positions. Even in her earliest paintings and drawings, infinite net structures, spots and dots create an expanding and pulsating visual universe, the origins of which Kusama herself traces back to childhood visions and hallucinations.
Focusing on new room installations, the exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien was the first major solo show by the internationally renowned artist in Central Europe. In her playful yet obsessive use of repetitive structures and reflections, Kusama intensifies the processes of dissolution of objects and their surroundings. Embedded in a comprehensive architectural concept by the Pauhof team of architects, which referenced the ideas of reflection and repetition, Kusama's infinite universes became tangible in the environments. In addition to videos, slide projections and fashion designs, installations from the 1960s were also on display.
After her studies of classical Japanese Nihonga painting, Yayoi Kusama broke away from the narrowness of her parental home and the Japanese society in 1958 and went to New York City to find the freedom she needed to pursue her artistic work. Her passionate expressiveness soon went beyond painting, and the characteristic Polka dots and Infinity Nets of her imaginative world started to overgrow objects, furniture and finally, entire rooms. This led to the first environments in the mid-60s, in which Kusama, using repetitive patterns, serial structures, countless dots and a vast variety of materials, created an illusion of the obliteration of objects, spaces, and people. The idea of 'self-obliteration' is also crucial to the nude performances, announced as body and love performances, which Kusama made, beginning in the mid-60s, mainly in public places in New York City. These performances responded to virulent political issues of the era, such as the Nixon affair or the Vietnam War, or related to cultural political developments, such as the increasing commercialization of the art market.
In 1974, Kusama returned to Japan and started to write autobiographical narrative texts and poems about her New York time and experience, which are read by a growing community of Japanese fans and have received literary awards. It took until the late 1980s that her significance as a visual artist for both younger generations of artists and art history was rediscovered and appreciated in numerous exhibitions.
The exhibition was organised in collaboration with Centre d'art contemporain Le Consortium, Dijon and Studio Kusama, Tokyo.
We thank our sponsors ANA, All Nippon Airways and the Embassy of Japan for their support as well as Prodomo for the loan of the furniture for the installation I'm here but nothing.