He Fa on Yayoi Kusama

Soft protrusions continue from hat to short garment, then onto the box beside the hand. Recurring similar shapes associate this look with Yayoi Kusama, but I want to linger on their different circumstances: growing on a hat, on clothing and on a bag is not the same occurrence. Repetition is only a starting point; the position of attachment keeps rewriting meaning.

Protrusions on the hat change the head's outline, those on the clothing sit close to the torso, and those on the box attach to the surface of something that can be carried away. They look like one series, but their relations of use are already separate. If I merely count similar shapes, I will miss when a body can put one part down and when it must carry that part along as it acts.

The rigid box is especially interesting. Regular edges surround irregular soft forms, making order and overflow appear together. It reminds me that repetition can also depend on a contrary framework.

Without the box's planes and edges, the protrusions might not stand out so strongly. We readily praise the parts growing everywhere, forgetting the limits that make their growth clearly perceptible.

Overemphasizing every difference can also scatter a series into unrelated individual pieces. Similarity does help us understand them together, without describing each from scratch. I want to preserve that thread while allowing comparison to go further: which similarities are merely visual, and which affect weight, carrying or the manner of approaching a body? A shared name cannot stand in for all of these.

He Fa's face retains an ordinary pause amid this dense surface. It makes me willing to draw repetition back from the imagination of endless extension to what one hand can lift. The box is still beside me now; if it is put down, the shapes on the clothing will remain. Precisely this separable relation gives the same things a chance to lead lives that are not quite identical in different places.