I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland

YAYOI KUSAMA: MIRRORED YEARS

"I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland."
Yayoi Kusama

City Gallery Wellington will celebrate the launch of its new Building Development with a solo exhibition of the extraordinary work of Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years is the international centrepiece of the Gallery's opening year of exhibitions. Yayoi Kusama's work is in great demand globally, which makes securing this exhibition for New Zealand audiences all the more significant. Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years opens 26 September 2009, auspicious timing given 2009 is Wellington City Council's 'Year of Japan'.

A radical and epoch-defining figure in the New York art world of the 1960s, Yayoi Kusama vied with Andy Warhol for the position of the most publicised artist of the era. Kusama was an iconoclast, a mover and shaker in the American counter-culture of that time, organising public happenings as well as making influential work in a period when significant changes and innovations were taking place in art practice. Kusama was embraced by important artists of the era such as Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, as well a Donald Judd and Don Flavin. In 1973 Kusama returned to Japan, where she continues to play a prominent role in the international art-world. Her work has been highly influential to a new generation of artists and designers.

Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years presents seminal works from the 1960s and 1970s alongside more recent work. Kusama is renowned for her lifelong interest in visual perception and sensory experiences, her fixation with repetitive patterns and forms, her iconic use of dots and her dizzying installations. Mixing Op Art, Pop Art and sculptural practice, her all-enveloping room-installations, mirrored to infinity, are hallucinatory, surrealistic, and utterly unlike anything else you will experience in the world of art.