Gagosian Gallery

Yayoi Kusama, "Flowers That Bloom at Midnight M1A" (2009). Fiberglass, reinforced plastic, metal, all-weather urethane paint, 86 x 71¼ x 116¼ in.

December 2009 / January 2010 Field Guide

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"A polka dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life" — that is how the celebrated Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama once explained her use of the iconic dots in her sculptures, installations, and works on paper. From December 5 to May 30, 2010, in association with Gagosian Gallery, the Matsumoto City-born artist will turn Miami’s 83-acre Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden into a surreal landscape with her own polka-dot flora. In her series "Flowers That Bloom at Midnight" (2009), giant clusters of sinewy stems in bright shades of pink, green, blue, red, and yellow — polka-dotted, of course — anchor huge multihued blooms that rise high above the garden’s lawn. Not far away is a patch of her "Pumpkins," monstrous yellow- and black-dotted, highly polished plastic gourds. And peeping above the surface of one of the garden’s ponds instead of gray rocks — or, as one might expect in South Florida, alligators — are the red blobs with white polka dots of Kusama’s Guidepost to the New Space.

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"Yayoi Kusama" originally appeared in the December 2009 / January 2010 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' December 2009 / January 2010 Table of Contents.