As the doors shut on Yayoi Kusama’s latest mirrored room — Beauty Described by a Spherical Heart — at the Victoria Miro gallery in London, I surveyed the prospect before me, above me, below me and all around me. That subject was me, me, me: an infinity of reflected mes. And gosh I looked good. Like the best Selfridges changing room, the Kusama mirror rooms don’t half flatter. Is it the tall, narrow mirrors (so slimming!) or the low, coloured lighting (so cool, so cheekbone-enhancing!)? I took the obligatory selfie.
The Infinity Mirrored Rooms are made for Instagram: narcissistic admiration meets experiential authenticity. I was there — and I looked hot. It’s not the most memorable Kusama room. The Japanese artist’s installation Filled with the Brilliance of Life, formerly at Tate Modern, was a jewel-box creation that seemed to set you spinning among and floating above the stars. Other rooms, such as the red plastic polka-dot dome in her You, Me and the Balloons exhibition at Manchester’s Factory International last year, fail to take off.
The new Victoria Miro room, with its disco-ball vibes, has a groovier edge. Once I’d done preening, I tried to find my way out. The mirrored door had disappeared into the walls. It was disconcerting, mildly panic-inducing and turned my reflections briefly sinister and mocking. For all the twinkling lights, the whole experience became, in those few worrying trapped seconds, many shades darker. Clever Kusama. Vanity punished and embarrassed.
The Art of the Polka Dot
Elsewhere in the Every Day I Pray for Love exhibition are riffs on familiar themes: two walls of disciplined dot paintings, here vastly variable in quality; a soft sculpture of trailing tendrils, reminiscent of the sort of frugal draught excluders you might make from old tights, but appealingly tactile in their way; a dotty forest of trees and lianas, half rising from the concrete, half hanging from the gantries. Like the troops of the Grand Old of Duke of York, you’re never quite sure if Kusama’s sculptures are halfway up or down.
Is This Kusama's Best Work?
Least successful are a trio of revolting caterpillar-like sculptures in the garden — the most unlovable of grubs. Most intriguing is the Ladder to Heaven which gives the illusion, when you bend to look, that you might climb forever skywards like Jack and the Beanstalk or miss a step and tumble eternally like Alice down the rabbit hole. At 95, Kusama — with the help of her studio — remains commendably prolific, but this is not her best work. One for the fans, one for the ’gram. ★★★☆☆
The Princess of Polka Dots: A New Exhibition
In her superb latest exhibition, featuring a new Mirrored Room, the Japanese ‘Princess of Polka Dots’ offers levity and humour. The 95-year-old Princess of Polka Dots, Yayoi Kusama, is opening her new exhibition at Victoria Miro Gallery this month. It marks the debut of her latest mirror room, Infinity Mirrored Room – Beauty Described by a Spherical Heart, as well as works from the artist’s most recent series of paintings and sculptures. This show is pop-making brilliance; the radiance of Kusama’s consciousness reaches out to tickle the mind of the viewer with levity and humor.
A World-Renowned Artist
For the uninitiated, Kusama is one of the most celebrated conceptual and commercial artists in the world and, according to a 2019 article in the Japanese Times, she is also the world’s top-selling female artist. In recent years, her fame in the UK has been amplified by a 15-metre sculpture of the nonagenarian outside Harrods, and a three-year installation at Tate Modern of her Infinity Mirror Rooms. According to Phillips Auction House, “Kusama is one of the most tagged artists on Instagram with some 80 million posts, and her auction record stands at $7.1 million, a figure achieved for a 1960 ‘Infinity Net’ painting in 2014.”
Immersive Experience
Now, on a side street in Islington, each entrant to the hexagonal mirrored room-within-a-room will be plunged, for two minutes, into a frozen reflecting pool of glass infinitely penetrated by swarming neon lights; a gallery attendant closes the double doors (of perception) behind you. Meanwhile, the mirrored central sphere shoots out a dopamine hit more intense than any post-Studio 54 fantasy.
A Return to the Physical World
Upon exit, a gentle comedown takes place in Victoria Miro’s cloistered canal-side garden, where Kusama’s new sculptural works are on show. A series of bronze sculptures (Women’s Profiles, Women and Women with Necklaces) bring to three dimensions the idiosyncratic stylized female figures that Kusama has explored throughout her career. These figures reappear in her Every Day I Pray for Love paintings, which are on display on the first floor of the gallery.
A Kaleidoscope of Colors and Textures
The informal group-hang style of the paintings forgoes the encumbrances of informative wall labels and engages on a purely visual level. Sadly, the extraordinary titles, some over 100 words long, are relegated to a somewhat miserly ‘walking list’ (a double-sided A4) as a consequence. Much of the work is reminiscent of cellular biology – if it was studied with a hallucinogenic kaleidoscopic microscope – and these elements are not constrained to the canvas. A waterfall of sewn, stuffed-fabric nerve tendrils spills into the room from the exposed-timber ceiling (Death of Nerves, 2022), while in another corner a “patterned, primordial forest” of red and black erupts from the floor (The Moment of Regeneration, 2024).
A Lasting Legacy
Ultimately, this is an aesthetically dizzying exhibition which confirms why the latent interest in Kusama is far more than just a fad. I would have encouraged you to snap up tickets while you can, but as it stands, they’re fully booked. Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the greatest commercial artist of them all?
From Sept 25. Information: victoria-miro.com
