Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern

Don’t miss out on the exhibition, which ends on 5 June 2012.

Kusama’s infinity nets use accumulation and repetition to create an immersive surface that directly reference the hallucinations she experienced from childhood.

Work by Yayoi Kusama

They are deeply intriguing surfaces to witness in reality, sublime and mundane, seeming to reference both hallucination for example and bearing a remarkable likeness to any common concrete pavement – recreating the experience Kusama often had when concentration on a particular object and pattern seemed suddenly to invest the rest of the world, complicating distinctions. Pre-linguistic, occurring in the space before naming, this notion and practice of accumulation and repetition is explored by many artists.

Newbloodart’s Dan Bennett mines a similar vein, though the result is overtly formalized, and he explores visual phenomena through the lenses of both biology and tradition.

'Nebula' by Dan Bennett

“Phosphenes have intrigued me since childhood. The intricate swirling patterns that form before the inner eye have been a constant source of inspiration and the mainstay of my artistic production. The spirals, dots, parallel and meandering lines, arcs, grids, circles and zigzags that dance across closed eyelids are a direct link to our cultural ancestry. These patterns are found throughout the ancient and modern world.”

'Excavations IV' - Sara Wilett

Working on a substantial scale Sara uses heavy boards, onto which she systematically layers acrylic paint. She then returns to interrupt the layering by excavating into the acrylic with repeated circular gestures. The results are bold and intense, visually mesmerising tonal paintings that emerge from what might almost be obsessive compulsion – a visual ambiguity is manifest. The repetitive gouged hollows swarm across the surface, light on dark, to confuse the eye and trick the brain.