Dots Obsession

Paris_Dots-1, originally uploaded by david_stirling.

One thing I've found about Paris is that if you wander aimlessly for more than half an hour, you're bound to run into something amazing. Case in point: "Dots Obsession". This installation by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is free to the public in the fabulous exhibition hall at La Villette through the rest of the summer. If I had seen this work in the Centre Pompidou, I'd be raving about it. The fact that I literally ran into it at the end of a jog up the canal is almost too good to be true. It has the two things I look for in art: pleasing on a purely emotional level, yet reaching for a more intangible reality that is outside our normal experience. In that respect, I hold it up with other great works by artists like Richard Serra and Chuck Jones.