Yayoi Kusama

Light Leaks

A scattered array of fifty mirror balls reflect light from three projectors, filling a room completely with small reflections, casting patterns that fill the visitor’s peripheral vision. Creating a curious space that alternates between a meditative state, and an uneasy imbalance. An experiment in combining a found object with computer vision to create a profound and unusual experience.

I’ve always liked mirror balls so Kyle McDonald’s combination of the traditional mirror-ball effect (multiplied fifty times) with three-dimensional computer mapping has an obvious appeal. The pictures here link to a small promo video. I’d love to see this in situ; I also wonder what it might look like in a mirrored room like those created by Yayoi Kusama. There’s more at Wired where McDonald discusses the technical aspects.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Infinite reflections

Alice in Liverpool

Alice and the Caterpillar (1865) by John Tenniel.

It’s perhaps surprising that an art gallery, rather than a library, is holding a huge survey exhibition about Alice, but then Carroll’s creation has been and still is the inspiration of artists, photographers, theatrical designers, animators, film-makers.

Thus Marina Warner writing about an exhibition of art based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice books opening at Tate Liverpool this Friday:

Alice in Wonderland will offer visitors a rare opportunity to view Carroll’s own drawings and photographs, alongside Victorian Alice memorabilia and John Tenniel’s preliminary drawings for the first edition of the novel.

Carroll’s stories were soon adopted by other artists. Surrealist artists from the 1930s onwards were drawn towards the fantastical world of Wonderland where natural laws were suspended. From the 1960s through the 1970s, Carroll’s Alice tales also prompted conceptual artists to explore language and its relationship to perception, and the stories inspired further responses in Pop and Psychedelic art. Expect to see works by artists ranging from Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, to Peter Blake and Yayoi Kusama. (more)

The exhibition runs to January 29th, 2012, and I suppose this gives me a convenient opportunity to point again to my psychedelic Alice calendars which have been updated for the forthcoming year.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Coulthart calendars for 2012
• Scenes from a carriage
• Through the Psychedelic Looking-Glass: the 2011 calendar
• Jabberwocky
• Alice in Acidland
• Return to Wonderland
• Dalí in Wonderland
• Virtual Alice
• Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar
• Charles Robinson’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Humpty Dumpty variations
• Alice in Wonderland by Jonathan Miller
• The Illustrators of Alice

Eno’s Luminous Opera House panorama

I’m a bit late with this one but better late than never. Brian Eno’s illuminated transformation of the Sydney Opera House, part of the city’s Luminous Festival, was widely publicised last month but I never got round to checking it out properly. This week Thom drew my attention (thanks Thom!) to this panorama by photographer Peter Murphy whose marvellous view inside one of Yayoi Kusama’s mirror rooms I linked to in March. Looking on Murphy’s site I see he has another Kusama panorama showing a view inside Phalli’s Field (or Floor Show). And while we’re on the subject of Ms Kusama, she currently has a room at London’s Hayward Gallery as part of their Walking in My Mind series by different artists. You can see a reaction to that here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Infinite reflections

Fireflies on the Water by Yayoi Kusama (2002).

One of my favourite contemporary artworks, Fireflies on the Water by Yayoi Kusama, receives a new showing at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Her mirrored room features 150 lights and a pool of water and while most photos show an impressive work, none of them can match this fantastic 360º panorama by Australian photographer Peter Murphy. Kusama isn’t the only artist to use mirrors this way but mirror rooms and reflective surfaces have become as much a recurrent feature of her work as her trademark spots.

Fireflies on the Water is being shown as part of the Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years exhibition and can be seen until June 8th, 2009. (Via Nevertheless.)

Mirrored Room by Lucas Samaras (1966).

I’ve often wondered how far back the invention of the fully-mirrored room can be traced. Halls of mirrors are historically common but the mirrors tend to be on the walls only. American artist Lucas Samaras produced his Mirrored Room (with mirrored chair and table) in 1966, something which fascinated me when I first encountered it in art books.

It evidently fascinated ex-art student Brian Eno who I’m sure must have borrowed the idea for the cover of his collaboration with Robert Fripp, (No Pussyfooting), in 1973. I’ve always assumed this was a room in Eno’s home at the time but never seen that confirmed. Anyone know whether this is the case?

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Josiah McElheny
• Yayoi Kusama
• The art of Yayoi Kusama
• Exposure by Robert Fripp

Infinity Mirrored Room—Love Forever (1994).

“It is not controversial to describe Yayoi Kusama as Japan’s greatest living artist,” says Hannah Duguid in The Independent. I made a post about Kusama’s artworks in 2006 and now her work is in exhibition at the Victoria Miro gallery, London.

For this exhibition, revered Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has conceived a new installation Dots Obsession—Infinity Mirrored Room (2008) especially for the upper gallery and in the lower galleries will install 50 new silkscreen works that will be shown alongside two significant sculptural pieces from the early nineties. At Victoria Miro 14 the artist will present a series of new dot paintings and an environmental installation I’m Here, but Nothing (2000-2008). The exhibition will continue outside the gallery where Kusama will install one of her most infamous works, Narcissus Garden in Regents Canal—a work which has never before been exhibited in the UK.

More pictures here. The exhibition runs until 20 March, 2008

Narcissus Garden (1966—2008).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Maximum Silence by Giancarlo Neri
• The art of Yayoi Kusama
• Atomix by Nike Savvas