vip in the city

Yayoi Kusama exhibition

‘Tis the season! The Holiday tree went up at Lincoln Center this morning. The official lighting ceremony will take place the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Tonight I attended a reception at the Robert Miller Gallery in Chelsea with the gallery curator, who was on site to introduce the Yayoi Kusama exhibition. The exhibition (on display through November 25) consisted of paintings, sculptures, mirror works, light installations and silkscreens by one of postwar Japan’s most influential artists.

Kusama’s works all share an obsession with repetition and pattern, which she claims are inspired by hallucinations of dots, nets and flowers she experienced as a child. At the gallery talk, the curator offered some additional background on the artist: Kusama, now in her mid-70s, arrived in New York from Japan in 1958 and quickly established herself among the city’s avant-gardists, and an important precursor for Minimalism and the Body Art movement. Her works then also included books, photo collages, film and performance art–even landing her on the front page of the Daily News in August 1969 after she, along with a bunch of naked co-conspirators, infiltrated the Museum of Modern Art’s sculpture garden to perform her “Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead.” Yoko Ono was among her devotees; she rivaled Andy Warhol on the quirky pop art scene. Despite this, she never quite achieved long-term critical or financial support. She returned to Tokyo in 1972.

Kusama was hospitalized at a Tokyo mental hospital in 1975, where she has voluntarily resided ever since. She continues to produce work there and at her condominium-turned-studio, a few minutes walk from the hospital.

In 1998, MoMA launched an exhibition focusing on Kusama’s prolific New York period, entitled Love Forever. Her pieces are now part of the museum’s permanent collection.

Kusama’s “infinty net” works were unsettling in their density; her 2006 largescale installation, “Black Nerve” (first photo, above) reminded me of a droopy set piece out of Little Shop of Horrors.

More palatable were the two “mirror box” works, which are smaller versions of Kusama’s trademark “infinity mirror rooms.” Others installations on display included “Ladder to Heaven,” which featured a lit ladder bracketed between a floor and ceiling mirror in a darkened room, creating the illusion of an infinite climb.