Every day I am reminded how lucky I am to live in New York City. First of all, because of the city’s energy, second of all, the interesting people I meet, and last but not least, the art! That’s certainly not a comprehensive list, but you get the point–New York City is definitely one of the biggest cities for art. A few weeks ago, me and Karen decided to use our Thursday club hours to visit an art gallery. I had heard about a super cool super awesome infinity mirror room a gallery down in Chelsea. After some research, it turned out to be part of Yayoi Kusama’s gallery exhibition, “I Who Have Arrived in Heaven” (on view until December 21). Apparently, the line was supposed to be an over 2 hour wait on average to get into the infinity room, but we just wanted to check out the place even though we might not have time to get on the line.
When we got there, the line was indeed very long, so we decided to see some of her paintings in the same gallery exhibition and the other infinity mirror room instead. What we saw was pretty interesting. Up until that point, the only thing I knew about Kusama was her crazy polka dot motif. It turns out that she has many other motifs in her work, including Egyptian style profiles, eyes, and faces. To be honest, when I first saw her paintings, I thought to myself, “Wow, what does this even mean? It makes no sense.” All of her paintings give off a hallucinatory vibe because it doesn’t focus on one thing at a time. Everything seems pretty much thrown on the canvas all at once. After studying one of her paintings for a while, I came to the conclusion that Kusama must be very connected to her subconscious, because the things that she draws look so random and spontaneous. I just kept thinking, “Is this what she sees when she looks at the world? Is this always happening in her mind? Like how does she even think of this stuff???” Although looking passively at her work may give you the idea that she does not have any meaning behind it, I think the idea may be to make the viewer stop and think with their own mind to come up with a meaning that relates to them and speaks to them.
Besides seeing Kusama’s paintings, we also visited her infinity mirror room, “Love is Calling,” which features a mirror lined room that has glowing, orb-like sea urchin tentacles coming out of the ceiling and the floor. Combined with the mirrors surrounding the rooms on all sides, the viewer is given the illusion of an infinite world where there are tentacles as far as the eye can see. This visual effect is paired with a audio component, where Kusama herself recites a love poem of hers in Japanese. It is interesting to note that the New York Times says the tentacles are phallus symbols, but the whole time I was in that room, that never crossed my mind once. I just thought that the visual effect that the ever-changing colors on the tentacles gave were very vibrant and symbolized the fickle and colorful nature of loveand life.
Even though I was not able to see the mirror room that literally everyone is talking about, I still enjoyed myself very much at Kusama’s gallery exhibit. It gave me fresh insight to what art means in the contemporary world and also showed me how art is defined differently for each and every artist. The viewer does not only see art through the artist’s eyes, but their own eyes as well, and that is what art is all about.
I recommend everyone to check out the exhibition review on New York Times if you want to learn more, or even go to the exhibit and experience it yourself! It is on view at the David Wirner Gallery until December 21, so hurry! 🙂
Here is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/arts/design/yayoi-kusama-i-who-have-arrived-in-heaven.html?_r=0
–Joanna Huang
