yayoi kusama dots philip johnson's glass house in a red polka pattern

yayoi kusama continues her engagement with philip johnson’s legendary glass house by creating the experience of an ‘infinity room’ using the architecture itself. ‘dots obsession – alive, seeking for eternal hope’ is one of three installations at the site, presented alongside ‘narcissus garden’ and a recently created enormous steel pumpkin. on view for a limited time — september 1 – 26, 2016 — the installation offers visitors the unique experience of simultaneously seeing the world through the eyes of both johnson and kusama.

all photos by matthew placek

covered in red polka dots, the glass house becomes a one-of-a-kind ‘infinity room’, signature to kusama’s oeuvre. ‘my desire is to measure and to make order of the infinite, unbounded universe from my own position within it, with polka dots. – in exploring this, the single dot is my own life, and i am a single particle amongst billions,’ kusama says. directly engaging with the architecture of site, large circular graphics wrap the house’s windows, walls and doors, complementing its structure and aesthetics. in a parallel scenario where philip johnson built the glass house as his own private universe, kusama too constructs an individual and personal world through the repeated representation of the polka dot.

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