Yayoi Kusama

Performing for the Camera @ Tate Modern, Feb 18 – Jun 12

18 February 2016

The Performing for the Camera group exhibition is on at London’s Tate Modern, opening February 18 and running to June 12.

Featuring over 500 images, the show purports to explore photography as both performance and utility in a survey of works by artists including Yayoi Kusama, Marcel Duchamp, Cindy Sherman and Yves Klein.

Also included in the survey of “vintage prints, large scale works, marketing posters” is Amalia Ulman‘s ‘Excellences & Perfections’ four-month durational performance on Instagram.

See the Tate Modern website for details. **

Header image: Amalia Ulman, ‘Excellences & Perfections’ (Instagram Update, 1st June 2014) (2015).

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Art Dubai, Mar 19 – 22

19 March 2014

The eighth edition of international art fair Art Dubai is running at the UAE city’s Madinat Jumeirah, from March 19 to 22.

Going over the three days, the globalised programme will feature commissioned projects and performances, residences and films, along with 70+ galleries across 30+ countries.

Galleries and artists to look out for include Carroll/Fletcher and Paradise Row from London, representing Michael Najjar and Mounir Fatmi respectively, Hajra Waheed from Kolkata’s ExperimenterYoung Jin Jo from 313 ART PROJECT, Yayoi Kusama from Ota Fine ArtsShilpa Gupta from Galleria Continua and more.

Locally, keep an eye on The Third Line, Grey Noise and Gallery Etemad from the Al Quoz district.

Read an overview of Dubai’s Al Quoz art district and see the Art Dubai website for details. **

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Managing Madness

5 March 2012

If you haven’t seen Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition at London’s Tate Modern yet, then you should. That’s if for nothing more than to step into the experience of mental illness with her famous Infinity Room at the end of it. Before you reach that spectacular and slightly terrifying installation, though, the retrospective tour of a life’s work provides some fascinating historical insight.

Yayoi Kusama  1965 - Courtesy of Gallery Victoria Miro ( Photo Eikoh Hosoe)
Yayoi Kusama 1965 - Courtesy of Gallery Victoria Miro ( Photo Eikoh Hosoe)

Obviously there are the phases in Kusama’s work covering her earliest Art Brut – style paintings and abstract watercolours of the 50s, her pioneering minimal explorations Infinity Nets and those famous phallic Accumulations of the 60s. Following a foray into collage and film at the same time as of her reactionary ‘happenings’ occurring in the psychedelic 70s, one can see other past motifs return to her work. Collage and watercolour resurfaces after her return to Japan and subsequent voluntary institutionalisation in 1973. The spermatozoa and natural forms of her earliest work return in her acrylic paintings in the 80s and by the 90s her fascination with organic abstraction extends into larger-than-life install pieces of stuffed cushions. The polka dots remain throughout. Continue reading Managing Madness

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