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Yayoi Kusama: Prints

25 January— 30 March 2019

Ota Fine Arts Shanghai is delighted to present “Yayoi Kusama: Prints”, a solo exhibition by Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama (born 1929, Japan). The exhibition features a set of colored woodblock prints, early mixed media works and 30 recent prints made between 2011 and 2012. These prints were based on small paintings that she executed around 2004 and were made with a variety of techniques including screenprint, silkscreen, etching and embossing.

Kusama made her first print in 1979, six years after she returned to Japan. She has continually and bravely explored the use of all possible mediums including sculpture, installation, painting, compulsion furniture, light sculptures, obliterative environments throughout her career and print-making is an important medium among these explorations. In particular, the medium of print coincides with her desire to create duplicates of the same visual field and to share them with the world.

Singular lines, accumulation of the net pattern, faces in profile and the diverse application of the eye motif come together to mark a distinct style in Kusama’s recent prints. The vivid bold colors and signature motifs penetrates the viewer’s visual field, drawing them in at once into Kusama’s multi-colored, peculiar and innovative expressions.

Simultaneously in this exhibition is a set of woodblock prints. These prints depict the Mount Fuji, Japan in different colors, and in a simple and child-like manner. They are created out of Kusama’s immense love for the mountain and can be seen through the titles, “All about Mount Fuji that I have loved my whole life” and “Mount Fuji is the home of my heart.” Elsewhere, some of her early mixed-media works are on display.

Spread across a duration of four decades, these works on paper reveal Kusama’s unique and multi-faceted vision of the world that we live in, from past to present. Ota Fine Arts Shanghai hopes that viewers may experience her vigorous and lively attitude towards art-making and to experience her “thought in a deep, straight and pure way with clear brightness.”

About the Artist

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Nagano prefecture in 1929. After studying painting in the modern Japanese Nihonga style in Kyoto, she moved to New York in the late 1950s. Kusama established her career as an avant-garde artist through stimulating happenings and exhibitions until the mid-1960s. She returned to Japan in 1973. From 1980 onwards, she became widely known through international solo exhibitions, and the opportunity matured for re-evaluation at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993. Thereafter, she has held solo exhibitions throughout the world at venues such as New York MoMA, Tate Modern and Centre Pompidou. In 2016, she was named as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people. In the same year, she was also bestowed the prestigious “Order of Culture” award in Japan.