Yayoi Kusama’s Dot Matrix

This isn’t brand new, but it’s still happening (through March 11th in Brisbane), and yesterday’s post about Tilt’s Panic Room jogged my memory. Looking like a joyous explosion of Wonderbread packaging, Yayoi Kusama let her dots loose upon Australia in the Obliteration Room. The installation, from Look Now, See Forever at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, makes use of colorful stickers and audience participation.

Above is the Obliteration Room pre-obliteration. Curator Reuben Keehan writes in Dots Obliterate the Internet:

Let’s be clear about this: her work looks great in reproduction, and people love a good, simple, elegantly executed idea. But what I find personally interesting is the way Kusama positions viewers at the centre of the work – not just in ‘The obliteration room’, but her in sculptures, installations, videos and larger paintings as well.

Continuing:

We’re beginning to see this approach more and more in museums everywhere. But it’s also perfectly in keeping with new media technologies and their impact on the way we experience, discuss and produce culture, life and love. Spectatorship has itself become a form of cultural production and participation, to a point where blogging and tweeting about a work of art can be seen as extensions of picking up a dot and pasting it to a wall, television or piano.

Hooray! By writing this, my pixels merge with Kusama’s dots. Click through for lots more loveliness.