Yayoi Kusama
EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE
New York, 537 West 20th Street
One of the most influential artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Kusama occupies a unique position within recent art history. Since her early assimilation of pop art and minimalism in the 1960s, she has created a highly personal oeuvre that resonates with a global audience. Distinctly recognizable, her works frequently deploy repetitive elements—such as dots—to evoke both microscopic and macroscopic universes.
The exhibition introduces new paintings in the artist’s iconic My Eternal Soulseries. Created in a more intimate format on view for the first time in the United States, these works are singular explorations of line and form. Minutely detailed, yet with bold explorations of color, they are at once abstract and figurative. Framed by the paintings and addressing a similar dialectic is a large, new floor-based constellation composed of almost a hundred different stainless-steel elements. Viewers navigate an all-encompassing environment of organic-looking, cloud-like forms whose reflections envelop its audience and reinforce an impression of perpetuity and infinity.
The gallery is also pleased to debut INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM - DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE, 2019, which offers an immersive and poetic experience of endless space. The continuous mirroring of the flickering lights ultimately underscores Kusama’s determination throughout her art to convey an “eternal unlimited universe [and] the eternity of interrelationships.”
An installation of new soft sculptures will also be presented. Painted in a unified palette, these works likewise appear on the verge of figuration and denote the artist’s preoccupation throughout her career with accumulations of similar shapes.
