Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler warmed my soul during this cold November week.
The past few days have brought back the cold weather. And the fact that you can always imagine certain conditions, even though you are familiar with them. When they actually happen, they always feel different. Hunger, for example, is one such feeling, as is the cold. After all the long warm months, suddenly feeling outside temperatures around freezing on my skin always comes as a bit of a shock. You get used to it over time, but this week I initially felt a dislike for it. Although there are also nice sides to it. Getting out the warm winter clothes, admiring the hoarfrost on the roofs and in nature, and the colors of the sky on these cold days.
Frosty days
Errands and Art
The week was packed with commitments and organizational tasks, clarifications, and doctor’s appointments with my father. Most of the time, I didn’t manage to free myself from everything in the studio until late afternoon, and then I worked into the evening. The first two definitive web images were completed in this way. Immersing myself in this work was the perfect balance to the other eventful moments of the past few days.
Abstractions of Life
This year’s show highlight
On Wednesday, however, I dropped everything and visited the Yayoi Kusama retrospective at Fondation Beyeler first thing in the morning. After visiting museums in Bern last weekend, this exhibition was the third on my wish list before my departure for New York. Yayoi Kusama is definitely a superstar of contemporary art, and at this exhibition I was overwhelmed by how many and how different the works she has created in her lifetime are. It’s incredible what one person can create. Like most people, I knew Kusama mainly for her polka dots and the pumpkins decorated with them. But I was initially captivated by her earlier works, which drew me in. The drawings, the etchings, the collages. And then to see how her work has developed over the seven decades of her career. The connection to nature, which runs like a red thread through her works, is implemented in a fascinatingly versatile way.
I am just another dot in the world.
Yayoi Kusama
You can feel her work, and the exhibition really manages to create an immersive encounter with Yayoi Kusama’s art and her perception of existence. This is particularly evident in the Infinity Mirror Rooms, where you can become aware of your own connection with the infinity of the cosmos. I was impressed and came back with that warm and happy feeling that art that appeals to me always triggers in me.
A tiny selection of works by Yayoi Kusama
