Art & Exhibitions
A Massive Yayoi Kusama Show—With a New Infinity Room—Is Expected to Flood David Zwirner’s Chelsea Gallery With 100,000 Visitors This Fall
Her forthcoming show at David Zwirner in New York is certain to draw long, long lines.
Her forthcoming show at David Zwirner in New York is certain to draw long, long lines.
Sarah Cascone ShareShare This Article
Don’t be surprised if you spot a line snaking around the block in Chelsea next month, because Yayoi Kusama is staging another show at David Zwirner, and it’s bound to be a blockbuster.
The Japanese artist has become a worldwide sensation on the strength of her signature polka dots and Infinity Mirror Rooms, Instagram-friendly works that inspire insane levels of FOMO.
At Kusama’s last show with the gallery, in 2017, 75,000 visitors showed up, a number more in line with museum exhibitions than gallery shows. Guests waited in lines for up to six hours for a chance to spend just 60 seconds inside INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM: LET’S SURVIVE FOREVER, an echo chamber of mirrored surfaces in which—no joke—Kusama installed a peephole infinity room inside an infinity room, with reflective steel orbs strewn about the space.
Now, David Zwirner has shared details about the upcoming exhibition, first announced in June. All the work has been made over the past two years, including new paintings from Kusama’s “My Eternal Soul” series of surreal, colorful, square-shaped canvases, according to ARTnews.
The steel orbs will also be back, in an installation reminiscent of Kusama’s Narcissus Garden, first staged at the Venice Biennale back in 1966. Kusama revisited the piece at the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 2016, and in 2018 at Fort Tilden in Queens through a project with MoMA PS1. A display of the shiny balls was also among the highlights of this year’s Frieze New York, at the booth of London’s Victoria Miro Gallery.
This time around, Kusama has created a new take on the historic piece by creating balls in varying sizes.
As always, the top attraction will certainly be the Infinity Room, a new 13-and-a-half foot space filled with LED lights. The piece, titled INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM – DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE, will be more minimal than previous Infinity Rooms, and “very different from anything you’ve seen before,” Hanna Schouwink, a senior partner at Zwirner, told ARTnews.
For the first time, the gallery will be open on Mondays for the run of the show, but only for school groups with appointments, offering local children the chance to experience Kusama’s interactive work. Once again, there will be a time limit inside the immersive installation, and long lines are expected for the duration of the show. (But without tickets, at least there won’t be scalpers.)
“Every time Kusama has a show, whether it’s in a museum or a gallery, attendance grows,” Schouwink said. “The interest in her work continues to grow. People always think, ‘If I come Tuesday, there won’t be lines.’ For sure, there will always be lines.”
“Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray for Love” will be on view at David Zwirner, 537 West 20th Street, New York, New York, November 9–December 14, 2020.