Yayoi Kusama
Infinity Dots Mirrored Room, 1996
glass, Formica, black light, decals
long term loan
500 Sampsonia Way, 3rd floor

Open a black, double door into a space with mirrored ceilings and walls. The white formica floor is covered with three sizes of colored fluorescent dots. The room is filled with black light. Reflected on ceiling and walls, you are an integral part of the space.

A mirror is a device which 'obliterates everything including myself and others' in the light of another world or a gallant apparatus which creates nothingness. – Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama
Repetitive Vision, 1996
glass, Formica, mannequins, decals,
long term loan
500 Sampsonia Way, 3rd floor

Through a second set of double doors, walk first into a black corridor and then into an intensely lit space whose floor is covered in hot red dots. Three female mannequins painted white, their bodies and hair covered with the dots, are reflected in the mirrored walls and ceilings.

At the opening, the artist wore clothing made for the rooms: a yellow dress, yellow hat and yellow bag, all dotted in black in Dots Obsession; fluorescent dots covering her black kimono, hands, face and hair in Infinity Dots Mirrored Room.

Dismantling and accumulating, proliferating and separating, the sense of obliterating and the sounds from the invisible cosmos. What are all these things? –Yayoi Kusama

All of Kusama's work has come from a waking vision in which she sat at a table covered with a floral tablecloth, in a room covered with floral wallpaper, and saw that her hands, too, were covered with flowers.

Kusama's work explores the obliteration of the self, as the viewer becomes part of the work, reflected in mirrors, obstructed by organic forms, almost as if being sucked into the walls. Yayoi Kusama lives, by choice, in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo. 

Kusama's work has been seen in numerous exhibitions in Europe and Japan and she was the first artist to represent Japan with a solo show at the 1993 Venice Biennale. Since her installation at the Mattress Factory major retrospectives of Kusama's work have been hosted by the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Yayoi Kusama
Japanese, born 1929