The Japanese art star Yayoi Kusama, is probably the ultimate outsider artist – now her highly popular retrospective “A Dream I Dreamed” has opened at Taiwan’s south-western city of Kaohsiung. More than 100 pieces of the artist’s work are featured, including paintings, sculptures, installations, and documentary film footage. Her popular “Infinity Mirrored Room” was one of the most anticipated works. The installation of a mirrored room filled with lights creates a kaleidoscopic illusion of infinite shimmering space.
The exhibition also includes a new version of her large polka-dot balloons installation, that has also been especially created for Taiwan. “Dots Obsession 2015″ uses gigantic red and white polka-dot balloons to fill a hall from floor to ceiling, the installation envelopes the viewer in Kusama’s patterned vision.
Yayoi Kusama was born March 22, 1929, throughout the artist’s career she has worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, sculpture, performance art, and environmental installations, most of which exhibit her thematic interest in psychedelic colours, repetition and pattern. A precursor of the pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements, it is said that Kusama influenced contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. The artist was sadly forgotten for a time, after departing the New York art scene in the early 1970s, Kusama is now acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan.
In 1973, the artist returned to Japan in ill health, where she began writing visceral and surrealistic novels of a quite shocking nature, short stories, and poetry. Kusama was soon to check herself into the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill, and eventually taking up permanent residence. The artist has been living at the hospital since.
Kusama’s retrospective “Infinite Obsession” was overwhelmed by fans in Mexico, causing a security nightmare. “A Dream I Dreamed” will continue on to New Delhi at the end of 2015.
“A Dream I Dreamed” will be on view at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, until 17 May 2015.