THE SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE, IN COOPERATION WITH GALERIA KAUFHOF, FRANKFURT,PRESENTS A WORK COMMISSIONED FROM YAYOI KUSAMA

DOTS OBSESSION/LOVE FOREVERBY YAYOI KUSAMA
11 October–7 November 2005
In advance of the exhibition Summer of Love. Art of the Psychedelic Era, which will be heldfrom 2 November 2005 to 12 February 2006, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, in cooperation
with the Galeria Kaufhof, Frankfurt, is presenting a large-scale work by Yayoi Kusama on thefacade and in the display windows of the Galeria Kaufhof on Frankfurt’s Hauptwache. Yayoi
Kusama’s Dots Obsession/Love Forever is the second cooperation between the Galeria
Kaufhof and the Schirn, following Barbara Kruger’s monumental work in the context of theexhibition Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture. Yayoi Kusama is one of Japan’s
most versatile and successful artists internationally. She has caused a sensation since the1960s with her installations and objects with bright dots. The artist, who became known inEurope as the Polka Dot Princess, covers her world with colorful dots: whole rooms, furniture,and people dissolve in a whirl of polka dots.
In the work she developed for Frankfurt, Dots Obsession/Love Forever, she covers the entire
outer surface of the department store with her colorful dots, producing a painting on a scalelarger than anything she has done before. The spectacular presentation continues in theGaleria’s display windows. Inflatable balloons that recall oversized fly agaric mushrooms float
above the main entrance behind multistory windows, bringing the ecstatically scattered dots
inside the building. In the windows some of the mannequins are hidden behind a dot patternthat monopolizes the entire space. The shop window dummies only return just under twoweeks later, wearing the new fall collection at the Galeria Kaufhof.
Another part of Yayoi Kusama’s work Dots Obsession/Love Forever will be shown in therotunda of Schirn in parallel with the exhibition Summer of Love, from 2 November 2005 to 12February 2006.
Yayoi Kusama was born in Japan in 1929. After studying classical Japanese nihonga painting,in 1958 Kusama left the confines of her parental home and Japanese society and settled inNew York to pursue her artistic work. With painting as her point of departure Kusama works tocombine artwork, artist, and life and develops her conception of the environment from theprinciple of the serial allover painting. Infinite network structures, dots, and spots are alreadyfound in the early paintings and drawings, establishing an expanding and pulsating visual
universe whose origins, as Kusama herself has indicated, are to be found in the visions andhallucinations of her childhood. Their passionate power of expression quickly bursts theboundaries of painting, and the characteristic polka dots andPRESSEINFORMATION „YAYOI KUSAMA, DOTS OBSESSION/LOVE FOREVER, SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT,
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infinity nets of her imagination grow rampantly like phallic growths, noodles, or simply dots,objects, furniture, and ultimately entire rooms. In the mid-1960s Kusama produced her firstenvironments, in which she used repetitive patterns, serial structures, countless dots, and awide variety of materials to pursue the illusion of wiping out objects, rooms, and people.
The idea of “self-obliteration” is also central to the nude performances described as “body andlove festivals” that Kusama organized from the mid-1960s onward, usually in public squares
in New York. These actions responded to politically explosive themes like the Nixon affair andthe Vietnam War or referred to developments in the politics of culture like the increasing
commercialization of the art market. In 1974 Kusama returned to Japan, where she wrote
autobiographical stories and poems about her experiences in New York that were read by a
growing fan community in Japan and received literary prizes. Not only the late 1980s was her
significance as a visual artist rediscovered for later generations of artists and by art historians
and appreciated in numerous exhibitions.
Kusama is one of the central artist figures in the exhibition Summer of Love. It is agroundbreaking exhibition on psychedelic art that sheds light on the unique connections
between contemporary art, popular culture, and political protests in the 1960s and early
1970s. It demonstrates that the psychedelic phenomenon was one of the most interesting andyet also one of the most overlooked of the twentieth century. The dialogue between
psychedelic art and political revolution and the counterculture found expression in a uniqueaesthetic that was expressed in social, political, ethnic, and sexual liberation. The search foran ecstatic art called for the expansion of consciousness and the desired sensory
overstimulation. Not infrequently these things were achieved with the help of hallucinogens,which were an essential aspect of the psychedelic movement. The presentation of more than
350 paintings, photographs, films, light shows, environments, posters, album covers, anddocumentation material from Europe, the United States, South America, and Japan in asensational exhibition design by UN Studio (Ben van Berkel, Caroline Bos) emphasizes themovement’s international character.

DOTS OBSESSION/LOVE FOREVERBY YAYOI KUSAMALOCATION: Galeria Kaufhof, Frankfurt, An der Hauptwache, 60313 Frankfurt, and Schirn
Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Rotunde, Römerberg, 60311 Frankfurt. DATES: 11 October 2005–7
November 2005 (Galeria Kaufhof, Frankfurt), 2 November 2005–12 February 2006 (SchirnKunsthalle Frankfurt). CURATOR: Matthias Ulrich (Schirn). PROJECT COORDINATION:
Hidenori Ota, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo. PROJECT DIRECTION: Beate-Ina Bender (GaleriaKaufhof).

PRESSEINFORMATION „YAYOI KUSAMA, DOTS OBSESSION/LOVE FOREVER, SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT,10. Oktober 2005, SEITE 2 VON 3SUMMER OF LOVEART OF THE PSYCHEDELIC ERALOCATION: SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT, Römerberg, D-60311 Frankfurt.
DATES: 2 November 2005–12 February 2006. HOURS: Tues, Fri.–Sun. 10 AM–7 PM, Wed.
and Thurs. 10 AM–10 PM. INFORMATION: www.schirn.de, E-Mail: welcome@schirn.de,Telephone: (+49-69) 29 98 82-0, Fax: (+49-69) 29 98 82-240. ADMISSION: 7 €, reduced 5 €,family ticket 15 €. CURATOR: Christoph Grunenberg, Tate Liverpool. PROJECTDIRECTION: Matthias Ulrich. EXHIBITION ARCHITECTURE: UN Studio (Ben van Berkel,Caroline Bos). PROMOTION: Saatchi & Saatchi. MEDIA PARTNERS: Frankfurter
Rundschau, plan.F – Das Stadtmagazin für Frankfurt und Rhein-Main, AD – ArchitecturalDigest, hr2-kultur, Neue Digitale: Kreativagentur für digitale Markenführung, RMV –Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund

PRESS OFFICE: Dorothea Apovnik (head), Simone Krämer
SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT, Römerberg, D-60311 Frankfurt,phone: (+49-69) 29 98 82-118, fax: (+49-69) 29 98 82-240, e-mail:presse@schirn.de, www.schirn.de (texts and images for download
under PRESSE)PRESSEINFORMATION „YAYOI KUSAMA, DOTS OBSESSION/LOVE FOREVER, SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT,
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