Exceptional Works: Yayoi Kusama at Frieze Seoul

“In the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the universe.”

—Yayoi Kusama

Presented on the occasion of Frieze Seoul, PUMPKIN (2013) and Dots Universe O.WHZ (2004) represent iconic examples of Yayoi Kusama’s practice. Each painting features motifs for which the artist is globally renowned and which have been present in her work since its inception.

Yayoi Kusama, PUMPKIN, 2013 (detail)

Installation view, Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin (1994), Naoshima, Japan, 2022. Photo by Kristen de La Valliere

Installation view, Dancing Pumpkin (2020), Kusama: Cosmic Nature, New York Botanical Garden, 2021

PUMPKIN depicts one of Kusama's characteristic dot-covered pumpkins against a background covered in its entirety with a thin net pattern. While pumpkin shapes have appeared in Kusama's work since her early art studies in Japan in the 1940s, this organic form gained a central importance in her oeuvre from the late 1980s onwards.

Dots Universe O.WHZ belongs to a series of dot paintings by Kusama. Here, multicolored circular shapes in varying sizes spread out against a silver background, subtly creating an impression of depth. The slight variations in the density of the pattern eradicate the sense of a fixed point in space, just as her ongoing series of Infinity Net paintings can be seen to push the medium to its spatial extents, simultaneously suggesting micro- and macrocosms.

Detail from Yayoi Kusama’s portrait of her mother, made when Kusama was ten, 1939

“The world of Kusama is magic. It is sometimes irrational but this is the price we pay for wonder, and as children do, we are ready to suspend our disbeliefs to enter her universe.”

—Franck Gautherot and Seungduk Kim, 2009

Yayoi Kusama, Dots Universe O.WHZ, 2004 (detail)

Dots occupy a central role within the artist's oeuvre. She has noted that she began to see her surroundings through a screen of dots early in her life, later coming to refer to the process as obliteration—the gradual removal of any trace of something. The at-once complex and simple design in turn echoes the history of obsession within her work, which derives from a desire for art that is both autobiographical and seemingly created outside the confines of the self.

Consign with David Zwirner