08 Dec 2017

Yayoi Kusama: Festival of Life

David Zwirner

Reviewed by Jan Castro

Yayoi Kusama's art transforms spaces, and the viewers become art. My group waited for four hours for one minute in Let's Survive Forever, one of Kusama's Infinity Rooms with a second Infinity Room inside. Seeing thousands of images of oneself and others in round, flat, and faceted mirrors is a highly charged experience, like having thousands of chances to live and to interact at once. Next, the group put on booties and glided through a white and red polka dot tulip room with three large sculptures. So much fun - I felt ageless.

At an adjacent Zwirner location, the artist's abstractions and zany, six-foot-square works with cartoon-like faces and flowers hang salon-style, surrounding and dominating viewers. The works have spiritual titles: A Soul Is Leaving The Body, All About Love, Tears Of Despair, I Found Death In This Glorious Life. Kusama's big pictures explore elemental concepts: the soul, life, death, the eternal, infinity.