Ota Fine Arts Singapore presents YAYOI KUSAMA: RECENT PAINTINGS, a solo exhibition featuring 15 monochrome paintings from the artist’s My Eternal Soul series made in 2019-2020, and CLOUDS (2019), a sculpture installation consisting pieces of mirror-finished stainless steel forms. 

In 2019, Kusama began working intensively on a body of 100 x 100 cm monochrome paintings. Unlike other paintings of the same series, the bright and vibrant colours have disappeared. Instead, bold black lines envelop the canvas together with her wealth of varied motifs: eyes, faces, biomorphic shapes, nets and dots. These new paintings synthesize contrasting concepts and forms of positive and negative spaces, figuration and abstraction, microscopic and macroscopic views of the universe. 

In CLOUDS (2019), stainless steel cloud-like shapes surround the floors of the gallery. They echo, reflect, and complement the lines in Kusama’s paintings, creating at once an expansive yet immersive atmosphere that allows for imagination beyond the walls of the gallery. As Yayoi Kusama continues to expand her creative vocabulary, this exhibition is exemplary of her continuous innovation, uncompromising vision and compelling charm that captivates people all around the world.

Yayoi Kusama, Clouds, 2019. Image courtesy of Ota Fine Arts. Photography by Zhang Hong.