Shana Nys DambrotIn case you missed or just didn’t get enough of last year’s Yayoi Kusama takeover of the Broad, the Marciano Art Foundation has something special for you.
Kusama’s practice is more than just all the infinity. Despite the extreme popularity of her illusionistic mirrored environments, her designs for immersive environments actually stem from her work in painting and sculpture. Her aesthetic is particularly defined by an obsessive love of pattern — especially polka dots.
© YAYOI KUSAMA , With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever (2011); Credit: Charles White, JWPictures.com/Courtesy Marciano Art Foundation
With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever (2011) is an expansive, walk-in installation with full-surround floor-to-ceiling architectural treatments and large-scale sculptural objects — potted tulips, to be precise.
Unlike the small-footprint but bigger-on-the-inside illusion of Kusama’s Infinity Room works, this piece occupies quite a large space but gives the optical illusion of compression. If the mirrors made you feel as if you were floating, the red and white polka dot skin makes you feel like you’ve been shrink-rayed down and are walking around inside the cells of a flower.
© YAYOI KUSAMA , With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever (2011); Credit: Charles White, JWPictures.com/Courtesy Marciano Art Foundation
Made of fiberglass-reinforced plastic, urethane paint, acrylic enamel and acrylic lacquer, the enormous alien flowers (which range from over 7 to almost 10 feet tall) emerge from and disappear into the all-encompassing spotted world of the piece. Despite the structure of “objects in a room,” the installation is considered a single work.
This is the first time the piece is being shown on the West Coast since it debuted at David Zwirner in 2017, which is where the Marciano Foundation acquired it. It will remain installed through at least spring 2019.
© YAYOI KUSAMA , With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever (2011); Credit: Charles White, JWPictures.com/Courtesy Marciano Art Foundation
Marciano Art Foundation, 4357 Wilshire Blvd., Windsor Square; (424) 204-7555, marcianoartfoundation.org. Thu.-Fri. & Sun., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; free, reservation required.
© YAYOI KUSAMA , With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever (2011); Credit: Charles White, JWPictures.com/Courtesy Marciano Art Foundation
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