Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Rooms

Yayoi Kusama is one of the most well-known contemporary artists in the world. She is best known for her conceptual and sculpture and installations, which blend elements of surrealism, pop art, abstract expressionism, and minimalism. Two of her Infinity Mirrored Room installations are currently on view at the Tate Modern in London. Both rooms strategically use lights and mirrors to create the illusion of infinite space. Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life is the artist’s largest mirrored room. Pinpricks of colored light shift rhythmically between hues, reflected off the mirrored walls, floors, and ceiling, as well as the still water filling pools on the floor. The effect is dizzying and beautiful. The other room, titled Chandelier of Grief, consists of a flickering baroque-style chandelier inside a smaller, hexagonal mirrored room. This meditative installation is meant to provoke thoughtful exploration of the viewer’s place in their environment. The current exhibition has been exceedingly popular, and it is easy to see why. These mesmerizing rooms are unique and transportive.

Every Day I Pray For Love

Yayoi Kusama is one of the most admired artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Known for her use of repetitive elements—most famously, her use of repeating dots—Kusama’s work enchants and inspires a global audience. Kusama’s new exhibition—Every Day I Pray for Love—is on display at the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea. The exhibit includes paintings in her My Eternal Soul series, sculptures, and, the reason for that very long line on the sidewalk in front of the gallery, the Infinity Mirrored Room - Dancing Lights That Flew Up to the Universe, 2019. One cold morning this week we waited in the line for about an hour to spend one minute with three other people in the infinity room. Although brief, it’s well worth it. The infinity room, as the gallery says, is an “immersive and poetic experience of endless space” and the beautiful flickering lights combined with the dreamlike reflections are meant to reveal, as Kusama says, an “eternal unlimited universe [and] the eternity of interrelationships.” Unfortunately, there is only a finite time to see it. The exhibition is only on display through December 14, 2019, so hurry!

Narcissus Garden in Rockaway

MoMA PS1 presents Yayoi Kusama’s site-specific installation of Narcissus Garden as part of Rockaway!, a free public art festival in Fort Tilden in Rockaway, Queens. Consisting of 1,500 mirrored stainless steel spheres, Narcissus Garden is on display in a former train garage that dates back to when Fort Tilden was an active US military base. The mirrored metal surfaces reflect the viewers (do you see Joseph?) as well as the industrial and decaying surroundings of the abandoned building. First unofficially presented in 1966 at the 33rd Venice Biennale, Narcissus Garden was installed on the lawn in front of the Italian Pavilion where Kusama stood among the mirrored balls. She tossed the spheres in the air and offered to sell them to visitors for 1,200 lire (approximately $2) in an act of self-promotion as well as a critique of overly commercial contemporary art. This exhibition is free and open to the public Friday through Sunday, 12pm to 6pm, through Labor Day, September 3.