Art Gallery Visit: Yayoi Kusama Exhibition at the Tate Modern:

Standing in one of Yayoi Kusama’s installations, you are lost in the psychedelia. You can’t seem to tell the difference as to what is the floor, ceiling or side of the room. 

The exhibition itself is contained in 14 rooms with a broad range of Yayoi Kusama’s works, which span her artistic life from Japan to America. She continues to reinvent herself through her work, even though she has contained herself to a hospital for the past 30 years and is still currently there.

Kusama’s obsession with her ongoing journey of self obliteration, has made her to create this installation as one of her largest explorations with mirrors. The chain of coloured beads beam brightly in an array of colours. The show is dazzling. No wonder she has named it ‘Infinity Mirrored Room - Filled with the Brilliance of Life’ (2011).

‘Painting pictures has been therapy for me to overcome my illness’. Words from the lady herself. Her use of her hands to make visual creations, stem out of her mind only. 

The reason she uses visual documentation of herself in to her works, is so that she establishes a focus on herself, as well as being the author and controller of her environment. Out of her early paintings as she was studying nihonga, she wanted to break out of the traditions and she began to experiment. Her illness in the early 1950s, had began to seep into her art, with the first appearance of her now trademark polka dots.

This can be seen in ‘Inside the Forest’ (1951), ‘Heart’ (1951) and ‘God of the Wind’ (1955). Her works during the early 1950s also touches on surrealism. Such as the ‘Dots on the Sun’ (1953) and ‘Island No.7’ (1953). They are without a doubt, visually appealing to everyone’s eyes. 

The life forms take the shape of gems and amoeba suspended on a page in front of you. The colour make these little life forms become real. 

Another piece of work which strikes the mind is ‘No.white.A.2’ (1958-59). It is a large oil on canvas piece with only the white brushstrokes of the brush, repeated over, and over. It’s not just a nice looking, ‘empty’ canvas to look at, but it highlights Yayoi’s obsessive nature of repeating things. Almost every single one of her works involve some form of repetitive  action. 

Even with her illness, it has not stopped her from creating. Usually, they develop in a phallic, often monstrous like tentacles coming out of objects, such as in her sex obsession series and her 1991 piece, entitled ‘Heaven and Earth’. 

The rest of the world recognises Yayoi Kusama, not only as the hospital contained polka dotted artist, but famous for her installations. But even more synonymous with the Hippie culture in America, with her painting happenings and orgy parties. Her exhibition at the Tate Modern is an interesting look into the deep psychedelic abyss that is Yayoi Kusama. A must see.