Yayoi Kusama: Look Now, See Forever

“Be it Picasso or Matisse, I’m ready for anything, I will stand up to them with only polka dots” – Yayoi Kusama

There’s an inherent youthfulness in the work of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama that is far beyond what you would expect from an artist now in her 80s. Look Now, See Forever brings together Kusama’s playful and often child-like work produced over the last two years, including painting, sculpture, video and installation, creating an exhibition that has an obsessive and hallucinatory whimsy much like a scene out of Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland.

Kusama developed her unique style in Japan in the 1950s and has eluded classification ever since, being thought of as an ‘insider-outsider’ rather than a follower of fashionable or artistic trends. This independence of style has given Kusama the freedom to taker her obsession with polka dots, patterns and vivid colour to the extreme, with installations such as Dots Obsession (2011) seeing an entire gallery room saturated in polka dots from floor to ceiling, interrupted only by enormous vinyl balloons that create energy and form within an otherwise ordinary room.

Kusama’s canvas work continues the theme of repetitive obsession seen with her installation works, and many are so vivid that the patterns appear to vibrate with such force that your eye begins to search for a calm place to rest amidst the chaos. However it is within this chaos – or what the artist describes as “self-obliteration” – that the artist actually finds a sense of peace, stating “obliterate your personality with polka dots. Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment. Take off your clothes. Forget yourself. Make love. Self-destruction is the only way to peace.” Perhaps then by returning to the mischief of childhood through Kusama’s work and immersing ourselves in chaos, we are forgetting the chaos of our own lives and essentially finding peace within the playfulness.

Yayoi Kusama: Look Now, See Forever
GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art)
November 18–March 11, 2012