Victoria Miro is delighted to participate in FIAC (Stand B16) with a three-person presentation of works by Yayoi Kusama, Jorge Pardo and Grayson Perry. A major freestanding and wall-based work by each artist will be on view.
Yayoi Kusama's FLOWERS THAT SPEAK ALL ABOUT MY HEART GIVEN TO THE SKY (2019), is a monumental new painted bronze flower sculpture, which will be on view for the first time as part of the gallery's FIAC presentation. Flowers have long been an important part of Kusama's art. One of the artist's earliest memories is of the flower fields that were part of the nursery owned by her family. At once simplified and fantastical, their surfaces covered with polka-dotted planes of vivid colour, Kusama's flower sculptures straddle a line between nature and exuberant artifice and are designed to be viewed from multiple angles, encouraging audiences to move around them. PUMPKIN [HRU] (2014), is an example of Kusama's iconic pumpkin paintings, completed in a quintessential palette of yellow and black. Kusama has had an affinity with pumpkins since childhood and its form continues to occupy a special place in her iconography and is a motif she has returned to repeatedly throughout her career. The pumpkin form appears in some of her paintings and works on paper as early as 1948. After her return from New York to Japan in the 1970s, Kusama rediscovered the theme and began making serial works depicting the pumpkin in various media. The artist has a strong personal identification with the pumpkin, and has described her images of them as a form of self-portraiture. She admires pumpkins for their hardiness and everyday quality, as well as for their unique and pleasing physical qualities. Speaking at the time of her exhibition at Victoria Miro in 2016, Kusama said: 'My love of pumpkins stretches back to when I was a little child. I have always found them to be such tender things to touch and so wonderfully humorous, humble and appealing. They have a warm feeling and human-like quality in their form. They make me feel happy. They are my friends. And I will always celebrate them in paintings and sculptures.' In collaboration with Victoria Miro, Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner, FIAC 2019 presents a major public work conceived for the Place Vendôme by Yayoi Kusama, as part of FIAC Hors les Murs (on view 15-21 October 2019). Installed near the Vendôme Column, Life of the Pumpkin Recites, All About the Biggest Love for the People (2019), expands on several of the most recognisable motifs of Kusama's visual language-the pumpkin, the polka dot and the inflatable-and is her largest inflatable sculpture to date.
Celebrated for his use of vibrant colours, eclectic patterns and natural and industrial materials, Jorge Pardo has since the 1990s drawn on the historical intersections of fine art, architecture and design to create highly intricate and hybridised objects that fuse aspects of painting and sculpture. Pardo's diverse output ranges from paintings, sculptures and murals to furniture and even entire buildings, such as his interior schemes for the celebrated L'Arlatan hotel, which opened in Arles in 2018. The gallery's FIAC presentation features a new wall based work which incorporates hand painting, laser engraving,LED light, figurative imagery and complex abstract patterning. Also on view is a unique Untitled chandelier, its sinuous lines of laser-cut PETG plastic resin surrounding a central light fitting, that offers an extended consideration of physicality and immateriality, the visible and the invisible.
Following a hugely successful solo presentation of works by Grayson Perry at FIAC 2018, which coincided with artist's first solo museum exhibition in France at La Monnaie de Paris, the gallery is showing important works by the artist, whose exhibition Super Rich Interior Decoration is currently at Victoria Miro Mayfair (until 20 December 2019). Works on view include the important pot Rumpleforeskin (2005)-its title a pun on the title of the classic Brothers Grimm fairytale Rumplestiltskin. Writing about the work in his 2009 Thames & Hudson monograph, Perry states: '[Rumpleforeskin] is quite freeform, showing a small, impish devil character masturbating. I like the idea that there are different forces tugging on you when you're looking at a pot like this: am I meant to be seeing it as a sublime piece of work, is it a joke, is there a historical reference, or is it some sort of intellectual exercise? Humour is for me a very creative force. It's instinctive, like sex, I think. Something either turns you on or it doesn't; something either makes you laugh or it doesn't. It's about supplying two electrodes and hoping that a spark will be triggered between them.' The pot will be shown with a new wall-based work by the artist.
RATES
Full-fare ticket 38 €
Reduced fare* 25 €
Children under 12: free entry
Cloakroom 2€ per item
*Students with a valid student ID- Individuals under the age of 26 (free of charge for under 12)- Louvre Jeunes, Louvre Professionels or Louvre Famille card holders
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OPENING HOURS
Wednesday, October 16th (invitation only)
Thursday, October 17th : 11am-2pm (Preview VIP)
Thursday, October 17th: 2pm-8pm
Friday, October 18th: 12pm-8pm
Saturday, October 19th
Sunday, October 20th: 12pm-7pm
Victoria Miro represents these artists: