Film & Kunst: "Kusama: Infinity"

In the series "Film & Art", the cooperation of Cinema Quadrat and Kunsthalle Mannheim:

KUSAMA: INFINITY

USA 2018. dir: Heather Lenz. Documentary. 77 min. English-japOmdtU. FSK: 6

Large and small dots of color and light wherever you look - on canvases, on objects, on human bodies: this is the art of Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929). It is almost impossible to escape her fascinating painterly cosmos of shimmering, colorful dots. She has long since achieved international cult status with her polka dots and "infinity mirror spaces". Kusama studied traditional Japanese painting, but was also interested in Western contemporary art. She visited the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe, whose paintings she came across by chance in a book, burned most of her own paintings and left for New York in 1958. She has been plagued by psychoses and hallucinations since childhood. In 1977, she admitted herself to a psychiatric clinic in Japan, where she still lives and works today. "I give form to things I'm afraid of - and then repeat this form thousands of times," she explains. "In this way, I transform unpleasant feelings into affinity and control the fear. This is my art of obsession."

Introduction: Alessia Tardivo, Kunsthalle Mannheim