SOUTH AMERICA | Yayoi Kusama. Infinite Obsession

Gallery 5 (2º floor), Gallery 1 (ground), façade and Plaza República de Perú Yayoi Kusama. Infinite Obsession it’s the first in-depth survey of the work of one of the most original and inventive artists of the postwar period to be presented in Latin America. Organized by Malba – Fundación Costantini in collaboration with the artist’s studio, the exhibition will offer an in-depth survey of the work of the most prominent living Japanese artist through more than 100 works from 1950 to 2013, including paintings, works on paper, sculptures, videos, slideshows, and installation works.

YAYOI KUSAMA
Infinite Obsession
Curated by Philip Larratt-Smith and Frances Morris
30 June – 16 September 2013
Opening: 29 June, 7pm

Malba – Fundación Costantini
Avda. Figueroa Alcorta 3415
C1425CLA Buenos Aires, Argentina

Curated by Philip Larratt-Smith (Deputy Chief Curator, Malba, Buenos Aires) and Frances Morris (curator of Kusama’s retrospective at Tate Modern, London) Yayoi Kusama. Infinite Obsession traces the trajectory of this maverick figure from private to public, painting to performance, studio to street.

The exhibition includes the artist’s most relevant works: the Infinity Nets from the fifties and the Accumulations sculptures; her performances and happenings from the sixties, like Self-Obliteration, and recent paintings and installations (Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life, 2011, and The Obliteration Room 2002-2013). The building of the Museum and the trees surrounding it will also be covered with red polka-dots, Kusama’s landmark.

Kusama was born in Matsumoto City, Japan in 1929. She began making poetic and semi-abstract works on paper in the 1940s before commencing her celebrated “Infinity Net” series in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These strikingly original paintings are characterized by the obsessive repetition of small painted arcs massed into larger rhythmic patterns. Her move to New York in 1957 was a watershed event for the artist, bringing her into contact with Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg, and Joseph Cornell. Her painterly practice gave way to soft sculptures, known as “Accumulations,” and then to live performances and happenings that became a staple of the downtown subculture and won the artist mainstream attention and notoriety. In 1973 Kusama returned to Japan, and since 1977 she has voluntarily lived in a psychiatric institution. The pronounced and singular psychological character of her work has always been matched by a range of formal innovation and reinvention that allows her to share her singular vision with a wide public through infinitely mirrored space and the obsessively repeated dots for which she is best known. In her most recent works, the artist has renewed contact with her most radical instincts in immersive installations and collaborative pieces that have made her, justly, Japan’s most celebrated living artist.

Yayoi Kusama. Infinite Obsession will be accompanied by a major publication in bilingual Spanish-English. This landmark book will include a full-colour plate section of the works in the exhibition, essays by Larratt-Smith (“Song of a Suicide Addict”) and Morris (“Yayoi Kusama: My Life, a Dot”), and a visual chronology of the artist’s life. In addition, Malba will publish the first Spanish-language translation of two of Kusama’s stories (Hustlers Grotto of Christopher Street and Death Smell Acacia) and the hitherto unpublished novel Double Suicide on Cherry Hill in partnership with the independent publishing house Mansalva, translated by writer-Anna Kazumi Stahl and his mother, Tomiko Sasagawa Stahl. Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Obsession consolidates Malba’s position as the regional leader in organizing international exhibitions of the most important and influential figures of postwar and contemporary art, and reaffirms the institution’s commitment to an original and challenging curatorial platform.

Tour

Malba – Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires
30 June – 16 September 2013
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro
12 October 2013 – 26 January 2014
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brasilia
17 February – 27 April 2014
Instituto Tomie Ohtake, San Pablo
21 May – 27 July 2014
Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City
25 September 2014 – 19 January 2015

Frances Morris is Head of Collections (International Art) at Tate. Formerly Head of Displays at Tate Modern, she oversaw the opening display of the collection in 2000 and its first major rehang in 2006. Past exhibitions and catalogues include Tate Modern’s recent retrospective of Yayoi Kusama in 2012, the major retrospective of Louise Bourgeois which opened at Tate Modern in October 2007, ‘David Smith’, 2006, ‘Henri Rousseau: Jungle in Paris’, 2005 (co-curated with Professor Christopher Green), ‘Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-72’, 2001, ‘Rites of Passage’, 1995 (co-curated with Stuart Morgan) and ‘Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism’, 1993. She is currently working on a retrospective exhibition of Agnes Martin. In 1997 she was appointed Art Programme Curator for Tate Modern and contributed to the two year programme of pre-opening projects in and around Bankside as well as developing the opening installation of the permanent collection at Tate Modern. Specialising in post-war European and contemporary international art, she has also curated projects with many contemporary artists from Britain and abroad, including Miroslaw Balka, Chris Burden, Genevieve Cadieux, Sophie Calle, Mark Dion, Luciano Fabro and Paul McCarthy.

Philip Larratt-Smith (Toronto, 1979) is an independent curator and writer based in New York and, since 2013, Deputy Chief Curator at Malba – Fundación Costantini in Buenos Aires. Previous exhibitions include Bruce Nauman / mindfuck; Tracey Emin / How It Feels; Bye Bye American Pie; Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed; and Andy Warhol, Mr. America. His upcoming projects include an exhibition of the late fabric work of Louise Bourgeois for the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and a survey of the work of Cy Twombly which will be the first monographic exhibition at the new Jumex museum in Mexico City. Larratt-Smith has written on artists such as Jenny Holzer, Guillermo Kuitca, Milton Resnick, Roni Horn, Joan Mitchell, Anna Maria Maiolino, and Philip Guston. As well, he is currently preparing the complete psychoanalytic writings of Louise Bourgeois for publication in 2016. Exhibition held in collaboration with Kusama Studio with the support of galleries Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and David Zwirner, New York.

Source: Press release

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