Recently named the most popular artist of 2014, Yayoi Kusama (HF Vol. 25) has currently taken over two expansive spaces at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. Her exhibition, “Give Me Love,” which closes this week, includes a reenactment of her popular installation, “The Obliteration Room” (2002), new pumpkin sculptures, and paintings. Known around the world for her polka-dotted visions that span 2D and 3D works, fashion, and performance art, the exhibit is highly anticipated and the wait is long. Attendees have waited several hours to enter her yellow house (No. 9393), where they can “obliterate” a room of whitewashed furniture by placing colorful polka-dot stickers all over it. It looks like a typical suburban house, complete with American flag and patio furniture, but under Kusama’s influence, it is transformed.
Even something as commonplace as a pumpkin is reinvented, as in Kusama’s latest ‘patch’ of sculptures. To Kusama, her stainless-steel pumpkins are a symbol for her own personal growth as a woman and an artist. Never one to stop experimenting, she also expands on her autobiographical series of paintings, “My Eternal Soul.” There are seventeen paintings in total, full of dots and organic shapes that retell emotional experiences, like “I Who Have Taken an Antidepressant” and “My Longing, the Unseen Land of Death.” They share the hallucinatory, obsessive, and energetic qualities we’ve seen throughout her career, something this exhibition aims to embody. “Give Me Love” by Yayoi Kusama is now on view at David Zwirner Gallery through June 13th.
