Now on the view at the newly opened, Rem Koolhaas-designed, Garage Contemporary Art Museum in Moscow, is acclaimed Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's "Infinity Theory". This is Kusama's first solo show in Russia and a truly incredible feat. Visitors are immersed inside unique environments that extend from inside the museum out in to beautiful Gorky Park.
Yayoi Kusama - Infinity Theory (2015) at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
Two of Kusama's stunning installations are Guidepost to the Eternal Space (2015) and Infinity Mirrored Room–The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013). Guidepost has the audience gather inside an environment in which white polka dots on a red background cover walls and structures, forming an outlandish, surreal landscape, confusing viewers’ perception and spatial orientation. Infinity consists of a room with mirrored walls filled with thousands of small lights, which appear as pulsating dots. These are infinitely reflected in the mirrors to create an illusory cosmos, which is experienced by a lone viewer, enabling each visitor to momentarily get lost in Kusama’s mesmerizing world.
Infinity Mirrored Room–The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013)
Also included in the show is Walking Piece (1966), one of Kusama’s earliest works. This is a slide show which portrays the artist walking the streets of New York in a traditional Japanese kimono with a parasol. Outside of the museum, Kusama extends her brilliance beyond the traditional gallery walls and has created Ascension of Polkadots on the Trees, a project that Kusama has shown in various public spaces around the world. In Gorky Park, trees in avenue will be wrapped in red cloth decorated with white polka dots. The museum notes that:
Kusama’s obsession with creating works using colored dots have their roots in the artist’s psyche, wherein hallucinations have haunted her since her childhood. In her memoirs, she recalls sometimes seeing the pattern in paintings spilling over the edges of the canvas to envelop her and everything around her, dissolving her inner self in the outside world. Later, she would use this perceptual experience, which shifts boundaries between fact and illusion, the real and the imaginary, to create works in a variety of media, from drawing, painting, and installation to sculpture, video, and performance.
Kasuma is an artist that has won critical acclaim since the 1980's. Her works have been shown around the world, from Japan to Paris to New York City. Her retrospectives contains hundreds of pieces and her output continues to be prolific. We love her infusion of Japanese surrealism and cutting edge psyche into Russia's newest and most progressive museum. The fact that she is finally showing in Russia is not surprising seeing as though the country has quickly evolved into a classic and modern art powerhouse. The Garage Museum, founded by Russian businesswoman, art collector and magazine editor, Dasha Zhukov is itself an impressive accomplishment. Founded in 2008, the institution was based in a temporary pavilion in Gorky Park created specifically for Garage by architect Shigeru Ban. Just this month, the Museum moved to its first permanent home — a groundbreaking renovation of the famous 1960s Vremena Goda (Seasons of the Year) pavilion in Gorky Park — designed by famed architect Rem Koolhaas. For more information please visit Garage Museum.
-JRS
Images courtesy of Garage Museum. *Click to enlarge.
From left: Ascension of Polkadots on the Trees, Yayoi Kusama, Walking Piece