Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is a fascinating artist that has dabbled in many mediums (painting, sculpture, collage, performance, video), but it's her installations that really blow my mind. The first opportunity I had to interact with her work was as a teenager in Pittsburgh. The Mattress Factory has "Repetitive Vision" on permanent display.

After many (many) years, this is still a memorable experience for me. And it's just the tip of the iceberg of what she can accomplish with a room and a some dots.

When that room happens to be mirrored, prepare yourself for an out of body experience.

Her story is as wild as her art. Inspired at a very young age by hallucinations triggered from abuse, she became obsessed with dots, repetition, pattern, infinity, and obscurity. A fixture of the avant guard modern art movement in new york during the 1960s, she was constantly plagued by mental illness and voluntarily committed herself to psychiatric hospital in 1977 where she lives to this day.

One of her most recent installations is the Obliteration Room in Brisbane, where she created a living environment in stark white and allowed visitors to cover the entire thing with sticker dots for 2 weeks.

If you're lucky enough to live in London, there's a retrospective of her work at the Tate Modern until june 5th. If it ever comes to NYC, you'll know where to find me. Obsessing over one of the most obsessive people in the world.