«The Exhibition as Artwork»

On Yayoi Kusma’s Retrospective at Gropius Bau

For artists, the manner in which their artworks are presented is of vital importance. An exhibition’s design guides the viewer’s eye and shapes stories. Yet for some artists, an exhibition is not simply a way of framing their work but itself forms part of the work. The exhibition spaces Yayoi Kusama creates are works of art filled with objects, figures and activity.

Inevitably, many of her ephemeral, site-specific creations disappear once an exhibition ends and live on only in photographs. This makes it all the more astonishing for her creations to be resurrected after decades, once again allowing viewers to experience the artist’s work in an entirely new and immersive manner. Kusama’s sculptural works demonstrate what it means to transcend boundaries; as in James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, the artist’s pieces are holistic, forming an open system rather than merely a sum of separate parts. At the same time, the exhibition also tells about the emergence of the artist, the individual conditions and relationships of the work to the time that encompasses it. So one goes on at least two journeys when visiting this exhibition.

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  • Today, with our sensitivity to the vulnerability of the biosphere significantly heightened by the coronavirus, climate change and the ongoing extinction of species, Kusama’s history of organic, all-embracing shapes and works imbued with biological life forms becomes even more breath-taking. It is as if the artist has been able to look into the matrix of life, the network of grids and dots of vegetal structures. Kusama’s hallucination of the world as a permeable surface and all-encompassing net expanding to an infinite depth and breadth is a dizzying adventure that opens up a world behind the world.

  • The Berliner Festspiele explores the phenomenon of breaking down boundaries in the fields of fine arts, theatre, virtual reality and political reality under the auspices of its Immersion programme series. Although Kusama’s exhibition is not part of that series, it reveals a similar stance: the artist pioneers forms of work and experience that both confront and engage us. She began creating her Infinity Mirror Rooms in the 1960s and has by now perfected their density and expansiveness. Mirrors create virtual, seemingly endless spaces; they are a journey into the cosmos and form galactic images of the sea of stars that surrounds us. I am therefore particularly pleased to be able to plunge into a new Infinity Mirror Room as part of Kusama’s solo exhibition at the Gropius Bau.

  • I am also delighted that this major retrospective of the artist Yayoi Kusama organised by Berliner Festspiele in our exhibition space itself takes an unusual conceptual approach. I would especially like to thank Stephanie Rosenthal, director of the Gropius Bau and exhibition curator, for bringing this influential contemporary artist to Berlin in such an expansive solo exhibition, which presents an impressive spectrum of works by this major figure ranging from early reconstructions to immersive new pieces.

  • (This text is published in the catalogue of the exhibition »Yayoi Kusama – A Retrospective” at the Gropius Bau, 2021.)