Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors is now open!

Seeing spots?

There’s a sudden influx of dots in the T-Dot, and that’s because the highly-anticipated Toronto stop of Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors has begun at the AGO. There are dots covering the front of the AGO, some TTC streetcars and subway stations, and they’re all over social media feeds across the city.

Last week, we opened our doors to the press, AGO Members and the public, giving ticket holders (some of whom have been waiting for months) the first glimpse at this unique, decades-spanning exhibition that showcases Yayoi Kusama’s artistic legacy. Throughout the show, we see how Kusama uses her signature motif of polka dots – which she uses to cover canvases, everyday objects, even herself and others – as a way to show how everything and everyone in the world is connected. Her famous Infinity Mirror Rooms are the epitome of that idea, as anyone who steps inside them immediately becomes part of the artwork, repeating on and on into infinity.

Here’s what the press had to say:

The Globe and Mail’s rave review says: “Kusama invites us to lose our personalities in an act of collective wonder, but she emerges as a sly individual, a trickster capable of pushing pop art into the new millennium.”

“In each of the galleries outside the Infinity Rooms… rich foundational elements of Kusama’s work that situate her proper place in art history abound,” says the Toronto Star.

She Does the City says: “While she may want us to see each other as equals, it’s hard not to put Kusama on a pedestal. Fun, imaginative, playful, frightening, trippy, sinister: the exhibit is all of these at once. Whether you’re an escapist or a realist, there is something dense for everyone to chew on.”

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