Yayoi Kusama: Recent paintings

Yayoi Kusama. Photo: Noriko Takasugi. © the artist. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, David Zwirner and Victoria Miro

Yayoi Kusama is to quote Art Forum “the artworld’s hottest ticket is for shows by a pumpkin-obsessed ninety-year-old woman.”

Her 2018 exhibition at Victoria Miro in London drew some 92,000 visitors. Her show at David Zwirner, in November 2019 featuring a new Infinity Mirrored Room, they’re expectations were 100,000 people, lines around the block the go-to background for so many selfies uploaded to Instagram — 100,000 visitors ready and able to become an artist if only in a minor way should they so choose. Paradoxically their memory and experience of her work will rather be the memory of their work, the image and publication. Art as backdrop!

Ota Fine Arts presented “Yayoi Kusama: Recent Paintings” before and during Singapore Art Week. It features monochrome paintings made in 2019 -2020 from the artist’s decade long My Eternal Soul series and a sculpture installation consisting of pieces of mirror finished stainless steel forms. This is her first solo exhibition in Singapore since her 2017 retrospective at the National Gallery Singapore.

She began working on a series of 100 x 100cm paintings in 2018. In 2019 abandoning the vibrant colours for which she is known, she began these monochrome paintings. These black and white works stand-alone from the other works in the series, which are covered in bright, vibrant colours, featuring bold black forms covering the canvas, curved and circular motifs and faces.

The monochrome palette forces the focus onto the shapes in each work, at first some seem abstract and some deridingly figurative, there is naturalism across all the pieces.  As the works dance between the abstract and figurative naturalism is asserted — is an abstract motif abstract or a section of Nautilus shell? She is forcing us to read the works not allowing a cursory view but pushing us towards comprehension.

With titles such as All of My Love for Humanity (2019), Looking into the Universe from My Heart (2019), Kusama is giving us an insight into the state of her current concern, the works reflect on humanity, love, death and her artistic and political position within the world with the work titled Yayoi Kusama to Michelle Obama (2019) — the most popular female artist in the world and the most popular female political figure in the world together in one work.

Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama to Michelle Obama (2019) Acrylic on canvas. 100x100cm

The forms of floating cells, cilia, a woman’s profile and stippled dots which have continuously appeared in her My Eternal Soul series of the past decade are clarified by the black and white palette.

About the artist

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Yayoi 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 ground breaking and influential happenings, events, and exhibitions.

In New York her works included Infinity Net paintings that cover large scale canvases with multiple strokes of whirls, soft sculptures whose motifs are derived from genitalia, installations that are made using mirrors, illuminations and happenings. After her return to Tokyo in 1973, she created literary works such as novels and poems which led to a Yasei Jidai award in 1983.

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, both of which took place in 1989. She represented Japan in 1993 at the 45th Venice Biennale.

A museum dedicated to the artist’s work, the Yayoi Kusama Museum, opened on October 1, 2017, in Tokyo with the inaugural exhibition Creation Is a Solitary Pursuit, Love Is What Brings You Closer to Art. From October 10, 2019, through January 31, 2020, the museum will present its fifth exhibition featuring the artist’s work, entitled Spirits of Aggregation.

Ota Fine Arts

Ota Fine Arts was established in 1994 in Tokyo. For over 20 years, the gallery has defined itself as being a pioneer of Japanese contemporary art. Since its inception Ota Fine Arts has promoted various Japanese artists, including internationally acclaimed Yayoi Kusama, and has been expanding the variety of its artists and their works. In 2012, Ota Fine Arts opened a gallery space in Gillman Barracks, Singapore, to expand its programs in the region. One of the main goals of Ota Fine Arts is to support and showcase more regional character, originality and commonality of the Asian cultural belt.

Ota Fine Arts, 7 Lock Road, #02-13 Gilman Barracks, Singapore, 108935

+65 6694 3071, sg@otafinearts.com; www.otafinearts.com

Thanks

Thanks to Ota Fine Arts for the exhibition and for much of the content of this post.