No artist embodies a life of obsession quite like Yayoi Kusama. As a child, she began seeing polka dots everywhere she went. For over 70 years the enigmatic, troubled artist has explored the circle as a metaphor, a pattern, a disease and a cure.
Kusama's latest exhibition, "Dots Obsession - Love Transformed into Dots," is now on view at SKUM Sørlandets Kunstmuseum in Norway. Through her immersive installations, her viewers become privy to her expansive hallucinations. As she writes in the release, "Forget yourself. Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment. Make love."
The 2006 work features massive dotted balloons hanging from the ceiling, resting on the floor and suspended in between in various places. Kusama herself makes a rare appearance in the work through a video projection, in which the artist herself appears covered in dots and eating flowers. Both the dots and the unusual diet address Kusama's habitual theme of losing oneself to the infinite fabric of the universe, acting as a small dot in an infinity net.
Yayoi Kusama, Dots Obsession-Love Transformed into Dots, 2006, Mixed media installation, Variable dimension
Courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc., Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo and Victoria Miro, London © Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama, Dots Obsession-Love Transformed into Dots, 2006, Mixed media installation, Variable dimension
Courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc., Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo and Victoria Miro, London © Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama, Dots Obsession-Love Transformed into Dots, 2006, Mixed media installation, Variable dimension
Courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc., Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo and Victoria Miro, London © Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama
Courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc., Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo and Victoria Miro, London © Yayoi Kusama
"Dots Obsession - Love Transformed into Dots" will show at the SKUM Sørlandets Kunstmuseum in Norway until September 1.
See more of Yayoi's tantalizing works in the slideshow below.
