[Ota Fine Arts Shanghai] Yayoi Kusama: Recent Paintings

6 Sep - 24 Oct 2020

  • Installation video: "Yayoi Kusama: Recent Paintings", 2020, Ota Fine Arts Shanghai, ©YAYOI KUSAMA, Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts

    Sound: ermhoi, Video: Zhang Xinsheng

  • Ota Fine Arts Shanghai is delighted to present YAYOI KUSAMA: RECENT PAINTINGS, a solo exhibition by Yayoi Kusama featuring 15 monochrome paintings from her My Eternal Soul series and a cloud-based sculpture installation consisting pieces of mirror-finished stainless steel three-dimensional pieces. As Kusama delves into the aesthetic potential of the monochrome, her restraint use of a limited palette brings to focus the form that she depicts and the strength of the motifs that has continuously appeared in her work over the past decade. Created at the tenth year mark of her My Eternal Soul series, they force a review on the way we look at and approach this series. As Yayoi Kusama soldiers on to expand her creative vocabulary, this exhibition is exemplary of her continuous innovation, uncompromising vision and compelling charm to dazzle and captivate the hearts of people all around the world.

  • For more information, please click here. 

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  • Installation views: "Yayoi Kusama: Recent Paintings", 2020, Ota Fine Arts Shanghai, ©YAYOI KUSAMA, Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Photography by Zhang Hong

  • In 2019, Kusama began working on a group of 100 x 100 cm monochrome canvases that she painted intensively by...

    YAYOI KUSAMA, YAYOI KUSAMA TO MICHELLE OBAMA, 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm  ©YAYOI KUSAMA

    In 2019, Kusama began working on a group of 100 x 100 cm monochrome canvases that she painted intensively by applying solid black paint on a white background. Unlike other paintings of the same series, the bright and vibrant colors have disappeared. Bold and curly black lines envelop the canvas together with her wealth of varied motifs: eyelets, frontal faces, biomorphic shapes, nets and dots. These new paintings synthesize contrasting concepts and forms of positive and negative spaces, figuration and abstraction, microscopic and macroscopic views of the universe. Non-uniformed brushstrokes have left some parts of the canvas untouched by black paint and the resulting white spaces create a shifting movement and flow. 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • As separated white stripes come together, they transform into an endless continuation of dots; All of My Love for Humanity...

    YAYOI KUSAMA, ALL OF MY LOVE FOR HUMANITY, 2019，Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm  ©YAYOI KUSAMA

    As separated white stripes come together, they transform into an endless continuation of dots; All of My Love for Humanity is perhaps the most distinguished work of this body of works. If this painting was created by pointillism, it would have less of a unique impression. Yayoi Kusama did not draw points directly. Instead, the points are the result of the spaces left untouched by the black paint; the subdivided white spaces and discontinuous white stripes amalgamate to create a voluminous yet non-overwhelming assemblage of dots. By suppressing her lust for infinite immersive space, as if touching that which is forbidden, this work reveals an even greater and rooted desire of hers.

     

     —— Akira Tatehata

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Installation view: 'Yayoi Kusama: Recent Paintings', 2020, Ota Fine Arts Shanghai, ©YAYOI KUSAMA, Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Photography by...

    Installation view: "Yayoi Kusama: Recent Paintings", 2020, Ota Fine Arts Shanghai, ©YAYOI KUSAMA, Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Photography by Zhang Hong

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    In "CLOUDS", stainless steel cloud-like shapes surround the floors of the gallery. They echo, reflect, and complement the lines in her paintings, creating at once an expansive yet immersive atmosphere that allows for floaty imaginations beyond the walls of the gallery. Here, Kusama's interest in reflection, repetition and accumulation is exemplified.

     

     

     

    Details: CLOUDS, 2019

    Stainless steel with patina and wax in ninety (90) parts

    Overall dimensions variable

    Edition of 3 + 1 A.P.

     

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    In 'CLOUDS', stainless steel cloud-like shapes surround the floors of the gallery. They echo, reflect, and complement the lines in...

  • About the Artist

    Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan in 1929. From her childhood experiences with visual and auditory hallucinations, she started to produce drawings and paintings of nets and polka dots. Through various obsessions, she developed her art philosophy of self-obliteration through compulsive repetition and proliferation of the single motif. Since the early 90’s, she has created outdoor sculptures and large scale installations using inflatables and lights, expanding her prolific world. She has held numerous solo exhibitions and retrospectives throughout the world. In 2016, she was bestowed the prestigious “Order of Culture” award in Japan. The Yayoi Kusama Museum dedicated to the artist opened in 2017 in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

     

    To learn more about the artist, please click here.