Can’t wait until March?
Narcissus Garden, installation view at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden 2016. (C) YAYOI KUSAMA, courtesy YAYOI KUSAMA Inc.
Looking to get your Kusama fix BEFORE the opening of our upcoming exhibition, Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors? With Narcissus Garden, Yayoi Kusama will be taking over even more of the AGO in 2018. From February 24 to April 29, the AGO will host her installation featuring over 1,300 stainless steel mirror balls spread throughout Signy Eaton Gallery, located next to Galleria Italia.
Created in 1966, the first incarnation of Narcissus Garden appeared in the gardens outside of the Italian Pavilion at that year’s Venice Biennale, using 1,500 balls. As one of her first pieces of performance art, Kusama planted a sign reading “Your Narcissism for Sale” and sold each mirror ball to visitors for two dollars. According to Kusama, “Lines formed as if [I was] a cashier at a supermarket.”
The installation will launch before Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, an experiential retrospective on the famous Japanese artist’s career of paintings, sculpture and, of course, the immersive infinity rooms that have been setting Instagram ablaze.
Kusama writes, “Viewers seemed stunned at first, gazing into a field that reflected themselves fifteen hundred times. Did they recognize the moon in each silvery sphere and did they also see the blinding sun flashing from each glittering globe? It was as if man stared into this blazing galaxy and sensed himself at one with the universe. With their own reflections multiplied to infinity, they suddenly knew man’s unlimited ability to project himself towards the farthest shores of heavenly space.”
We’re so excited to bring this little piece of heaven by Yayoi Kusama to Toronto. It’s included in general admission!
Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors runs from March 3 to May 27, 2018. AGO Members have the first opportunity to buy tickets on December 12, 2017, followed by a public sale opportunity on January 16, 2018. Due to very limited exhibition capacity and very high popular demand, we expect this exhibition to sell out quickly (find out how to get tickets here).
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