Charmingly neurotic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's polka dot-dominated art has come to the capital for the opening of the recently redeveloped Wellington City Gallery.

Ms Kusama, who has lived in a Tokyo mental institution since the 1970s and works from a studio across the street, makes her life-long hallucinations of a world overrun by polka dots come to life in much of her art.

She has been producing colourful quirky works since she arrived in New York City in1956 and vied with Andy Warhol for exposure. Today she is the world’s highest earning living female artist, after a work of hers was sold by Christie’s New York for $5.1mUSD in November 2008.

Her solo exhibition at Wellington’s City Gallery is highlighted with a unique work the 80 year old created especially for the building, which opened its doors to the public on Sunday after an eleven month closure while it underwent redevelopment and extension.

As a way of announcing the arrival of her works in Wellington and celebrating the gallery’s reopening, Ms Kusama has designed bright pink, green, orange, red, yellow and blue polka dots of varying sizes to be plastered all over the exterior of the building.

The festive eye-catching display may appear like a random spattering of coloured dots, but the work, titled ‘Dots for Love and Peace’, is very precise in its placement of polka dots.

Wellington City Gallery director Paula Savage told NBR that architectural drawings and plans for the building had to be dug out and sent over to Kusama for the creation of the work, and the artist was closely involved in the way the dots were placed from her base in Tokyo.

Titled ‘Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years’ the exhibition was funded with the support of Ernst & Young, The Japan Foundation and The Asia New Zealand Foundation.

One does not just view a Kusama work but walks through, amidst and is engulfed by a Kusama work

The most consuming example of the polka dot hallucination realised is 'Dots Obsession Day', a room entirely encased in bright primary yellow on the walls, floor and ceiling littered with black polka dots.

Suspended at various angles in the room are bulbous balloons in yellow with black dots identical to the walls, which at once melt in to and spring out from the walls to the viewer’s eye. Walking amid the surreal landscape of the room, the viewer is engulfed by the work which becomes overwhelming in its cheerful vibrancy.

The mirrored matching work 'Dots Obsession Night' is an entirely identical room but with the colours reversed. The walls, floor, ceiling and balloons (suspended at angles precisely identical to that of the ones in 'Dots Obsession Day') are black with yellow dots. The mood of the room is sullenly oppressive in stark contrast to the uplifting playful energy of the matching 'Day' work.

The most eerie and magical moment of the exhibition is 'Infinity Mirrored Room (Fireflies on the Water)'. Allowing only three people in the room at a time, the work is from the outset simply a white door with a handle.

Upon entering the tiny room and the door being shut, the viewer is trapped within the artwork. The small dark room is lit by dainty coloured lights like those found on a Christmas tree, but which are hung individually at varying lengths from the ceiling like illuminated icicles of warm colour.

The walls of the small room are entirely made of floor to ceiling mirrors, distorting the size of the room and enhancing the number of lights it feels one is surrounded by.

Gradually, as the senses awaken in turn, the viewer realises there is water in the room. A pool of indeterminate depth forms the base of the room, and the platform on which one stands is the size and shape roughly or an ironing board. The mossy wet smell hits the nostrils first, then the sensation of damp is realised – finally the viewer concludes that there is indeed water in the bottom of the room.

Whether the delicately lit cocoon of the purposefully overwhelming work 'Infinity Mirrored Room (Fireflies on the Water)' is enchanting or claustrophobic is of course entirely subjective.

Other works include 'The Moment of Regeneration', a forest of red dotted cactus-like phallic shapes at quirky angles that seem like something from a Tim Burton film, while 'Walking On The Sea of Death' is a boat made from clusters of silver phallic shapes and a few sporadic apples and bunches of grapes. The boat sits within a room wallpapered with images of itself, multiplying the boats swarming at the viewer to 1000.

Close in correspondence with Georgia O’Keefe while she attempted to get her career off the ground, Ms Kusama exhibited with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Claes Oldenberg during the 1960's. She reportedly exudes intense nervous energy, working for 48 hours straight then collapsing in to several days of sleep, even today at age 80.

Hating labels and refusing to be called avant-garde, a pop artist, a surrealist or an abstract expressionist, Ms Kusama is highly regarded and her work is now in hot demand internationally.

The exhibition runs to 7 February 2010.