Judging by the long lines that have snaked around Chelsea ’s David Zwirner gallery this week , it seems that New York has found its next big blockbuster art induction : I Who Have Arrived in Heaven , a striking and intense show by 84 - year - old Nipponese artist Yayoi Kusama — we get a chance to take deep down .
There are three major parts to the show : 27 awesomely poppy dot paintings , a television performance by Kusama herself , and two “ infinity rooms , ” which are the heavy draw for most visitors — some of whom have waited for 60 minutes to spend rough 45 second in each room .
The first room is called Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away . Because the way is cover in giant pieces of mirror , it ’s hard to get a read on the sizing of the infinite , but it ’s roughly the size of a small bedroom . The floor is address in a shallow puddle of water — except for the peninsula you ’re standing on in the mediate — and the roof is hang with strings of hundred of colorful LED crystal .
Blinking on an erratic 45 - second gear iteration , the sparkle seem to load out forever — it ’s as though you ’re in the back of a cab in a far - off mega - city , an out - take from a William Gibson novel . The 2nd infinity room , also , is treat in mirrors and filled with color - shifty , inflatable tentacles . They are perplexing , witching , and disorienting spaces . And certainly , they have all the earmark of the “ viral ” art installation that have taken New York by violent storm over the past few old age : Interactivity , vivid sensorial experiences , and of course of study — a high selfie factor .
But the eternity elbow room is more than just a magical piazza to employ Instagram — it ’s a piece that touches on mental illness , suicide , and the use of art at the most canonical storey . Kusama come out on the art scene as a 29 - yr - former Japanese emigre in 1960s New York ( she ’s bruit to have take Donald Judd as a fan ) , whose paintings and performance fine art take over directly from the hallucination she has experience by since her puerility . But after her meteoric rise , she returned home to Japan in the 1970s , mention psychological stress and a battle with depersonalization syndrome .
Kusama checked herself into a mental insane asylum in Shinjuku , where she has exist and exercise for almost 40 years since . mostly ignored by major museums for decades , it was only last class ’s Whitney retrospective thatrekindled external interestin her work . And the involvement has been vivid — not only from curator and collectors but from the fashion world , with Louis Vuitton inviting Kusama to transform its flagship facade last summer .
Kusama ’s art is linked to her malady , making it a strange mixture of torture and joy : From her paintings , which are inspired by hallucinations and vision , to her eternity rooms , which she describes as a tool to tear down the self . “ By obliterating one ’s private self , one replication to the infinite universe , ” she write during arare fax interviewwith Grady Turner in 1999 . She has articulate that without art , she would ’ve committed suicide .
This month ’s show let in a poem Kusama save about fearing death — an experience that the remarkably badass and saucy artist like Kusama finds strange : “ It was not imagine to be my style to be terrified of that , but I am . ” But at the hatchway , which she made the voluntary trek to from Tokyo , she was more optimistic : “ I ’m here today from that institution and the medico made me acquit the tab to help me as well , ” shetold The Daily Beast ’s Ann Binlot . “ I think I will be able to , in the end , rise above the clouds and wax the step to heaven , and I will look down on my beautiful lifetime . ”
I Who Have Arrived in Heaven is on thought atDavid Zwirner‘s West 19th Street veranda through December 21 .
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