Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years

 

Went to the City Gallery in Wellington yesterday. This gallery has been closed for many months and opened just a few weeks ago with an exhibition of works by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusami. The exterior of the gallery has been covered with dots! Without knowing the artist or what the exhibition contained this made little sense. But I loved the playfulness of it, and that the city of Wellington has spirit enough to update an old building in this way. The dots are stickers – so no damage will be caused to the building.

 

There was a monster queue to get inside. Two reasons for this – the first being that only 200 visitors are permitted in the gallery at one time, giving enough space to allow you to look at the art properly. I do like this. The second – unbeknownst to me, was this was a free entrance day. So in the half hour wait I had plenty of time to contemplate the dots – but no wild epiphanies came to the fore.

In the civic square there are a number of government council buildings, plus the gallery and library. Suspended above the square is a silver ball sculpture featuring the NZ fern symbol.  What caught my eye was the silver urban sculpture on top of a building a little way back.

 

The exhibition was great – humorous and thought provoking and spacey. These pics are from www.yayoi-kusama.jp.

spheres suspended from the ceiling	‘Moment of regeneration’	monster silver/black vinyl covered bubbles on the floor and hanging about
the wall, floors and ceiling painted in black with the orange dots, amorphous balloons floating around. walking into this was like walking into some version of outer space	between the black room and the orange room (coming up) was a maze of convex mirrors	about to enter the orange room	The orange room being the inverse of the black room, including the shape and position of the balloons
The above is a different gallery, but just to give you an idea of the black and white canvases	Each canvas is about 1m x 1.5m. She uses black marker and pens out patterns and repeats of shapes	Lots of line work – the detail is phenomenal.	Apparently she would create a work like this in one sitting – working for 30 or more hours to complete it. I would guess you go into a trance like state with the dots and lines and fluid repeats