Yayoi Kusama, Cosmic Nature (Installation view), via Art Observed
After several delays caused by the Covid-19 virus, the long-awaited exhibition of Yayoi Kusama’s work at the New York Botanical Garden has finally opened. Planned for exclusive exhibition at NYBG, the show sees Kusama reveling in a lifelong fascination with the natural world, beginning with her childhood spent in the greenhouses and fields of her family’s seed nursery. Giving her voice and works ample space to evolve and envelop the lush grounds of the Botanical Garden’s diverse selection of plants, the show is a fascinating embellishment of both artist and nature, speaking, and working, in unison. Â
Yayoi Kusama, Cosmic Nature (Installation view), via Art Observed
The show makes much of the links between Kusama’s practice and a fascination with nature, attributing her artistic concepts of obliteration, infinity, and eternity are to an intimate engagement with the colors, patterns, and life cycles of plants and flowers. Here, the combination of the two makes for a colorful and playful conversation. Spectacular installations feature Kusama’s multifaceted art, including monumental floral sculptures that transform NYBG’s 250-acre landmark landscape: cartoonish flowers spring up from the waters and grounds around the Garden, each marking the space with a unique contrast between the artist’s bold colors and nature’s subtle hues. Elsewhere, the artist’s signature pumpkins peek out from behind shrubs, or in the case of a monumental new work, Dancing Pumpkin, draw the viewer towards open air to engage with her curving lines and subversion of reality. In and around the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, Kusama’s work comes to life through a seasonal progression of violas, salvias, zinnias, chrysanthemums, and other colorful annuals, while her plant-inspired, polka-dotted sculptures are nestled among meadow grasses, bellflowers, and water lilies, including Hymn of Life—Tulips (2007) in the Conservatory Courtyard Hardy Pool. Her mesmerizing Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity (2017) is on view in the Visitor Center gallery.
Yayoi Kusama, Cosmic Nature (Installation view), via Art Observed
Yayoi Kusama, Cosmic Nature (Installation view), via Art Observed
The show is a striking interrogation of Kusama’s work, one that places her sculptures into a relation with the world that one is rarely afforded in the gallery or museum, and showcases just how her concepts of obliteration and the eternal functioned in her early practice, blotting out and covering over landscapes and objects with polka-dots and paint. Soaring trees are adorned in vibrant red with white polka dots, while elsewhere, bodies of water are filled with gently-glowing silver orbs. All of this is complemented by the garden’s own internal spectacle, as the landscapes change throughout the seasons, with tulips and irises in spring, dahlias and sweetpeas in summer, following through to pumpkins and chrysanthemums in fall.
Yayoi Kusama, Cosmic Nature (Installation view), via Art Observed
Giving Kusama’s work a rare chance to thrive against a landscape that emphasizes the shifting times of season and time, the exhibition is a powerful reminder of the ever-changing infinitude of nature, a perfect backdrop for Kusama’s work.
The show closes October 31st.
Yayoi Kusama, Cosmic Nature (Installation view), via Art Observed
– D. Creahan
Read more:
Yayoi Kusama:Â Cosmic Nature [Exhibition Site]
