Yayoi Kusama: New Works

10 February - 5 April 2012
Victoria Miro Gallery I

Information

16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW
Download:

Victoria Miro Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Japan's most revered contemporary artist, Yayoi Kusama.

The paintings have been selected from a major series commenced during the past three years. Initially conceived by Kusama to comprise a hundred paintings, the series has, with characteristic dynamism, grown far in excess of that number. The result is a magnum opus, a vibrant flowering of an artist whose six-decade career has been a constantly evolving enquiry into the twin themes of cosmic infinity and personal obsession.

The paintings are at once startlingly innovative and classically Kusama. Completed in a single session, each is a flatly painted monochrome field that abounds with imagery including eyes, faces in profile and other more indeterminate forms, often in pulsating combinations of colour. From the psychedelically primordial My Forsaken Love, in which biomorphs traverse a black-fringed molten-pink ground, to the strata-like composition of Standing on the Riverbank of My Hometown I Shed Tears, a canvas filled with sedimentary layers of cell-like dots, eyes and extravagantly decorated lashes, the paintings generate new motifs and arrangements of forms while continuing a lifelong preoccupation with the mysteries of the physical and metaphysical, the tangible and ineffable - the space where seeing and feeling intersect.

These are fluid, highly instinctual, improvisatory works. In Look at the Women Singing Out Love and Finding Myself In The Midst of Creation, repeated profiles create insistent rhythms, while in Love, Birth And Death, And Illness, And What is Happiness? a shoal of eyes, variously narrow and wide as if scrutinising their surroundings, provide a bass beat for a quizzical encounter between semi-abstract forms that seem on the cusp of coalescence.

When looking at these paintings we might think of Paul Klee's famous statement about taking a line for a walk. In Kusama's hands, the irreducibly basic elements of art - the dot, the line - assume poetic urgency, gathering together strands of the sensory, sensual and personal as they traverse the canvas. Distinctions between drawing and painting, figuration and abstraction, internal and external worlds are erased in works that do not obey convention but invent their own pictorial logic. Often, a disconcerting sense of depth and scale is in evidence. Flatness gives way to illusory space, background motifs jump in scale as they move centrestage. As viewers we negotiate a world of multiple viewpoints, where flux and disorientation, expressions of Kusama's personal experience, are part of the encounter.

There is a palpable sense of the artist's hand pushing ever onwards in these works, making discoveries as it goes. Yet, motifs familiar from Kusama's oeuvre remind us of preoccupations that can be traced back to the hallucinations first experienced by the artist in childhood. The cell-like dots that proliferate in The Sun Is Loved By Everybody and A Talk About Boundless Love, And All About Love are instantly recognisable as variations of the multiplying polka dots that feature in Kusama's work from as early as 1939. The optical complexity of these paintings might be thought of as a graphic distillation of the endlessly refracted worlds of Kusama's enveloping mirrored environments first created in the 1960s.

It is fascinating to consider these recent works in tandem with the artist's forthcoming retrospective at Tate Modern, where the genesis of Kusama's visual language is revealed along with her art historical prescience. Covered with undulating loops of paint, the Infinity Net paintings, first produced by the artist in New York in the late 1950s, act as a conduit between abstract expressionism and minimalism. First made in the early-1960s, Kusama's soft sculptures adorned with phallic-like protuberances anticipate the work of Claes Oldenburg, while her use of wallpaper and collages incorporating elements such as airmail stickers would have a profound influence on Andy Warhol. Today, we are as familiar with the highly personal, confessional style of art pioneered by Kusama decades ago as we are used to her command of different media. These new paintings allow us to consider the artist's unique vision as conjured by nothing more than brush, paint and canvas. They are a distillation of the themes that characterise Kusama's art, grounded in the known world but grasping towards the unknown and the unknowable.

Victoria Miro

16 Wharf Road
London N1 7RW
t: +44 (0)20 7336 8109

info@victoria-miro.com

View map

Victoria Miro Venice

San Marco 1994,

Calle Drio La Chiesa

30124 Venice, Italy

t: +39 041 523 3799 

info@victoria-miro.com
View map

Opening Times

During exhibitions:

London: 
Tuesday–Saturday: 10am–6pm. 

 

Venice: Tuesday–Saturday: 10am–1pm & 2–6pm. 

 

We are also closed on Sundays, Mondays and public holidays. 

 

Admission free. 



 

Enquiries

All general enquiries should be sent to
info@victoria-miro.com

 

All press enquiries should be sent to
press@victoria-miro.com
 
All rights and reproduction enquiries should be sent to
rights@victoria-miro.com


Victoria Miro does not accept unsolicited artist applications.

 

Before contacting or subscribing please read our Privacy Policy

 

We respect the choices you make about how you would like to hear from us. You will find links at the bottom of all emails we send from our mailing list which allow you to Update your preferences to change the way we contact you, or Unsubscribe if you want to opt out.

 

Read our Modern Slavery Statement here.

 

Read our sustainability statement here.

Subscribe

Staff contact details

Directors

Victoria Miro
W.P. Miro
Glenn Scott Wright
Gussie Huddart
Executive Assistant to Directors
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7549 0491

Sales

Divya Pande
Head of Sales
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7324 0903
Oliver Miro
Director of Sales
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7549 0496
Paula Sankoff
Senior Director, Sales
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7549 0494
Clare Coombes
Director of Sales - Museum Acquisitions
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7324 0919
Simon Kirby
Director of Sales
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7549 0498
Alessandra Modiano
Director of Sales
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 3962 4346
Will Davies
Director of Sales
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 3962 4355
Fern Warriner
Associate Director of Sales
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7324 0905
Pia Sophie Biasi
Director – Venice
Direct line: +39 041 523 3799
Alexandra Leverett
Senior Sales Administrator
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 3962 4344
Victor Schagerlund
Sales Administrator
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 3962 4356
Libby Tyler
Sales Administrator
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7324 0912

Exhibitions

Erin Manns
Director of Exhibitions - Head of Department
Direct line: +44 (0) 7780 463 580
Jessica Green
Director of Exhibitions
Direct line: +44 (0) 7957 195 504
Rachel Kent
Director of Exhibitions
Direct line: +44 (0) 7852 751 045
Mary Taylor
Production Director
Direct line: +44 (0) 7950 267 092
Simona Pizzi
Artist Projects Director
Direct line: +44 (0) 7848 006 894
Imogen Sampson
Exhibitions Associate
Direct line: +44 (0) 7572 724 115
Virginia Sirena
Exhibitions Associate
Direct line: +44 (0) 7950 267 246
Julia Oborne
Digital & Exhibitions – Vortic Exhibition Associate
Direct line: +44 (0) 7883 702 323

Communications

Kathy Stephenson
Director of Communications
Direct line: +44 (0) 7803 611 186
Martin Coomer
Head of Editorial and Digital Content
Direct line: +44 (0) 7930 490 411
Marisa J. Futernick
Digital and Social Media Consultant
Direct line: +1 (860) 549 2576
Bea Bradley
Photography, Rights & Reproduction Manager
Direct line: +44 (0) 7957 787 866
Aimee Blow
Design and Communications Coordinator
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109

Operations

Robert Holzberger
Director of Operations
Direct line: +44 (0) 7986 580 363
Photini Pavlidis
Senior Facilities and IT Manager
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7324 0914
Olivia Singh
Operations Manager
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7549 0493
Vicky Polakovic
Front of House and Events Coordinator
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7324 0913
Mary Eleanor McNicholas
Art Fair Coordinator
Direct line: +44 (0) 7896 548 233
Clare Rowe
Paper Archive and Records Manager
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109
Philip Ewe
Library Coordinator and Archive Assistant
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109
Adeline Guy
Registrar Director - Head of Department
Direct line: +44 (0) 7490 237 709
Jayne Archard
Senior Registrar
Direct line: +44 (0) 7496 865 055
Alice Panton
Senior Registrar
Direct line: +44 (0) 7852 751 046
Emer Bermingham
Senior Registrar
Direct line: +44 (0) 7984 073 772
Fiona Holdsworth
Assistant Registrar
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109
Amelia Power
Assistant Registrar
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7324 0901

Technical Services

David Wood
Technical Director, Head of Department
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109
Jon Glazier
Head Technician
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109
Martin Fletcher
Senior Technician
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109
Jonny Winter
Senior Technician
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109
Rob Phillips
Senior Technician
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109
Ross Taylor
Technician
Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109

Finance

Direct line: +44 (0) 20 7336 8109