Flowers that Bloom in the Cosmos
Yayoi Kusama (born 1929) · 2022
Three enormous flowers rear up on the terrace outside the new building, their petals and stems covered in polka dots of red, green, blue and yellow, taller than the people who gather to photograph them. They are at once cheerful and slightly alarming, like blooms from a science fiction jungle that have arrived overnight, and against the thin white roof lines of the pavilions and the grey blue of the harbour they are impossible to miss, day or night.
Yayoi Kusama began painting dots as a child in Matsumoto, Japan, when hallucinations covered everything she saw in repeating patterns, and she made the dot her signature through seventy years of painting, performance, mirror rooms and sculpture. Look at the surfaces: the dots are painted by hand in careful gradations of size, so each petal seems to swell and recede. The stems twist as if the flowers are alive and turning toward the light, and the shapes recall the pumpkins and tulips she has made for public places around the world. Walk around them and the composition changes with each step.
The work was commissioned for the opening of the Sydney Modern Project in 2022 with support from the gallery's foundation and the Gandel family, and it was designed to mark the entrance to the new building for years to come. It has become the most photographed object at the gallery and a fixture of the walk from the city through the Domain. The flowers on the terrace are among the largest outdoor works Kusama has made for a public museum.
Did You Know? The flowers were placed so that they are visible at night from the road and from the bay, a lantern for the new building.
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