YAYOI KUSAMA

Yayoi Kusama is one of Japan’s most distinguished artists. A contemporary of Donald Judd, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol, Kusama’s highly acclaimed international career spans over forty years. After the first major survey of her work presented in Europe by the Serpentine Gallery in London including paintings, collages, watercolours, sculptures, documentation of performances and films, all of which exploring Kusama’s obsessions with dots, nets, food and sex, Galerie Piece Unique will exhibit rue Jacques Callot the latest sculpture made specially for this occasion: “Repetitive Vision, Phallus Boat” which is a red boat of almost 350 x 150 cm fulfilled with phallus of the same colour.

Born in 1929 in Japan, Kusama arrived in New York in 1958 where she showed her work with major painters and sculptors of the time such as Claes Oldenburg, Robert Morris and Andy Warhol. In Europe her work was exhibited with the Nul and Zero Groups together with that of Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni. Amongst the collectors of her work were Frank Stella, Donald Judd and Lucio Fontana, demonstrating the great esteem in which she was held by her contemporaries. Her work was recently the subject of Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama 1958-1968, a major travelling exhibition focusing on her decade in New York, that was jointly organised by the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and also of In Full Bloom: Yayoi Kusama Years in Japan organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

The opening of the exhibition at Pièce Unique Gallery on March 16 at 6 p.m, will be preceeded by a performance of Mrs. Kusama at Hôtel de la Monnaie on March 15, and by a meeting with the artist organised by Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts on March 16 at 2.30 p.m