Two years after the triumph of "Love Forever," the large-scale American-curated retrospective that earned Yayoi Kusama long-overdue recognition here at home, Japan's premier visual artist is back with an intimate and wonderful Tokyo gallery show.
The 20 paintings, sculptures and objets dating from the 1970s to the present make a good introduction for those new to Kusama's work. The show, at Ota Fine Arts in Ebisu, should also appeal to the artist's dedicated followers, as it makes clever use of monochrome shades to bring different styles and periods together. Although Kusama has often painted from a vibrant palette, the works here were all done in blacks, whites and grays, and this proves a simple but effective way of unifying the show.
A 2-meter-tall stuffed cotton cactus stands in the center of the 50-sq.-meter space, and it, like many other pieces in this show, is covered with dots. A field of dots or netlike designs and, more importantly, the obsessive repetition of these and other patterns, is Kusama's leitmotif. The style stems from a daydream she had during her "truly miserable" childhood in Matsumoto: She saw the pattern of a tablecloth begin to spread out over the entire room she was sitting in, making everything that was different somehow the same, and spreading out to envelop her. She ran from the frightening phantasma, but in her hurry to escape fell down a flight of stairs.