By Samuel Jablon
Don’t miss Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition at the Whitney, up until September 30, in all its beautiful, fashionable, madness. Born in Japan in 1929, Kusama moved to the states in 1957, then returned to Japan in the early 1970’s. Everywhere, nowhere, and all over, Kusama’s work–current, hip, creepy, and playful all at once–includes painting, sculpture, film, performance, poetry, and immersive installation. The theme throughout is illusion: the creation of seemingly endless space. Using dots and different accumulation strategies, she repeats, revisits, and launches into new formations, beautiful and terrifying. Her obsessive meditations on object making, repetition, pattern, psychedelic color, and performance are both timely and timeless.
The show begins with Kusama’s early paintings, and I was surprised to see in the last gallery that Kusama has recently returned to painting. Everything else seems to be suspended in-between.
is on display, but the tickets are timed, with an allotment of one
minute per visitor. If you want to see this part of the exhibition, go
early because tickets for the day are usually spoken for by noon. The
installation creates a space in which “individual viewers are invited to
transcend their sense of self.”
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