Sunday, 20 May 2012

Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern

Started with paintings that were like deep voids - I liked them - reminded me of some drawings I did once where the blackness is space. Then some works om paper. Intricate and obsessional paintings using small identical brushstrokes built up. Beautiful. Almost like optical illusions. A sign on the wall warned that the film inside had some explicit content. Inside Self Obliteration was showing - towards the end, hippy soundtrack, images overlaid, orgy of naked people painting dots on each other and smearing paint in a disco with flashing lights, mad expressionist dancing like some kind of explicit roll-in-the-mud festival. Hands everywhere but no hard-ons. A simulation of sex? Guess which was the most crowded gallery...

Installations came next. Shoes, clothes, boats, chairs, rooms covered in sewn phalluses. Then the room of fluorescent dots with ultraviolet light making them and anyone wearing white shine. I tried not to smile - remembering clubs where you look freaky with your white teeth catching the ultraviolet. And everyone has white dust. And finally some amazingly zingy paintings with eyes and faces, followed by the fabulous Infinity Mirrored Room filled with the brilliance of life - which was us and lots a coloured lights reflected back through the mirrors and the floor. Hippy trippy. Makes me want to embrace the altered mind-state...

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