Yayoi Kusama’s work, with its vivid colors and striking clarity, has often been regarded as “pop.” When tracing back, this characterization reveals intersections between her work and the Pop Art movement that flourished in New York in the 1960s, where she was then based. Yet her practice is rooted in deeply personal impulses—hallucinations and obsessions—through which she layers everyday imagery with inner visions to create a distinctive artistic world.

Focusing on Kusama’s distinctive brand of “pop,” this exhibition explores the breadth of her creative output. Collages that fill the picture plane with identical printed materials, such as airmail stickers, reflect a mass-consumption society while also exposing the obsessive impulses that drove her practice. A three-dimensional work featuring a mannequin covered in macaroni likewise unites mass-produced food with Kusama’s deeply personal obsessions. This impulse toward repetition extends to self-portraits and other works featuring the artist herself, proliferating and circulating across diverse media, including prints, photographs, flyers, and exhibition posters.

In two-dimensional works produced after her return to Japan, as well as in recent large-scale paintings and sculptures, Kusama’s sensibility is clearly evident in her use of primary colors, simple outlines, and the repeated motifs that define her work. The exhibition also features a small mirror room newly unveiled to the public, in which colorful polka dots reflect endlessly, alongside an installation employing inflatable objects that enliven the surrounding space and fill it with color. We invite you to experience KUSAMA’s POP—a world energized by rhythmic repetition and an extraordinary sense of color.

L: Self-portrait 1986
R: ONCE THE ABOMINABLE WAR IS OVER, HAPPINESS FILLS OUR HEARTS 2010
© YAYOI KUSAMA

L: Dots Obsession 1996/2009
Installation view at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (Thailand), 2009
R: Flowers that Bloom Tomorrow 2016
© YAYOI KUSAMA