Amel Afzal

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Yayoi Kusuma, Everyday I Pray for Love

Our visual design team meets every week at Hearst. We use an hour to touch base, critique work, get team insights or just chat about nothing. Once a month we try to do something that will inspire us — In December, we decided to go see Yayoi Kusuma's EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE’ which brings viewers into an all-encompassing environment that highlights the artist’s prolific style.

Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation. Her work is based on conceptual art and shows attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, art bruit, pop art, and abstract expressionism. I know! She is one of the most influential artists to come out of Japan and her work brings in global audiences with her recognizable and unique style.

The exhibition introduces new paintings in the artist’s iconic My Eternal Soul series. Created in a more intimate format on view for the first time in the United States, these works are singular explorations of line and form. Minutely detailed, yet with bold explorations of color, they are at once abstract and figurative. Framed by the paintings and addressing a similar dialectic is a large, new floor-based constellation composed of almost a hundred different stainless-steel elements.

Pro tip: The gallery opens at 10 am - go first thing in the morning (9:30 am or earlier) to miss the line!