Major Outdoor Florida Exhibition by Internationally Acclaimed Artist Yayoi Kusama

Written by Casper Benning Thursday, 09 February 2012 20:02

CORAL GABLES, FL.- This December, the world famous Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden will present Yayoi Kusama at Fairchild as part of its annual visual art program. The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, known for her distinctive sculptures and paintings that involve hand-worked repetition and bold patterning, will be exhibiting works from the exuberant new sculptural ensemble Flowers that Bloom at Midnight (2009), a group of her classic Pumpkins, as well as Guidepost to the New Space, a multi-part floating work specifically conceived for Fairchild’s Panandus Lake.

This will be the first time anywhere in the world that all these sculptures have been shown together in an outdoor setting. “Yayoi Kusama at Fairchild” will open on December 5, 2009, to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach, and will be on view through May 30, 2010.

“Fairchild is absolutely thrilled to bring Yayoi Kusama’s enchanting art works to South Florida,” said Bruce Greer, Fairchild’s board of trustees’ President. “Her surreal, botanically inspired monumental sculptures, brought together with Fairchild’s world-famous tropical garden landscape, are sure to provide a magical experience for visitors of all ages.”

Flowers that Bloom at Midnight consists of vividly painted, giant cast flowers measuring between five and sixteen feet in height. These sinuous baroque forms will provide a lively contrast with the monolithic Pumpkins. The multi-part floating work Guidepost to the New Space, a series of rounded “humps” in fire-engine red with white polka dots, will protrude enigmatically from the water in a pond on the 83-acre garden. Thus Kusama’s artificial garden will unfold in all its psychedelic glory, against the exotic backdrop of Fairchild’s gardens with their equally rare and wondrous tropical vegetation. All sculptures in the exhibition are on loan from Gagosian Gallery.

Yayoi Kusama is one of the world’s leading artists and a living legend of the international art avant-garde. Flamboyant yet profound, her oeuvre encompasses unique masterpieces in painting, sculpture, and installation, as well as mass production and popular culture. Kusama also produces playful sculpture on a monumental scale. Her first large-scale sculpture appeared in 1994, a huge, vivid yellow pumpkin covered with an optical spot pattern, which was installed at the end of a jetty on the island of Naoshima in the Seto Sea, Japan.

She has since completed several major sculptural commissions—ensembles of huge, brightly hued, triffid-like plants and flowers—for public institutions in Japan and abroad including The Visionary Flowers (2002), Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Nagano, Japan; Tulipes de Shangri-La (2003), Eurolille, Lille, France; Tsumari in Bloom (2003) Matsudai-machi Higashikubiki-gun, Niigata, Japan; and The Hymn of Life: Tulips (2007), Beverly Hills City Council, Los Angeles.

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto City, Japan in 1929. Her work is in the collections of leading museums throughout the world including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate Modern, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Major exhibitions of her work include Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Fukuoka, Japan (1987); Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York (1989); “Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1969,” LACMA, 1998 (traveling to Museum of Modern Art, New York, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo), 1998–99; Le Consortium, Dijon, 2000 (traveling to selected venues in Europe and Korea), 2001–2003; “KUSAMATRIX”, Mori Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2004 (traveling to Art Park Museum of Contemporary Art, Sapporo Art Park, Hokkaido); “Eternity – Modernity”, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (touring Japan), 2004–2005; and “The Mirrored Years,” Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2008,which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and will open at the City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand later in 2009.

“Yayoi Kusama at Fairchild” is part of an annual exhibition series in support of the Garden’s conservation work, educational outreach programs and commitment to cultural enhancement in South Florida. Fairchild houses internationally important collections of rare tropical fruit and cycads as well as the largest palm collection in the U.S. The Garden maintains an international conservation program, which works with more than 20 countries to preserve some of the worlds’ rarest species and tropical habitats. Fairchild’s major art exhibitions have included world-renowned artists such as Mark di Suvero, Roy Lichtenstein, and Dale Chihuly. Visit : http://www.fairchildgarden.org/

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