Dezeen Magazine

Yayoi Kusama exhibition in London includes three new mirror rooms

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is exhibiting a year's worth of new sculptures, paintings and installations at London's Victoria Miro galleries, including three mirrored rooms and plenty of pumpkins.

The works are exhibited across Victoria Miro's two locations at Wharf Road, Islington – including its waterside garden – and St George Street, Mayfair.

Yayoi Kusama installation
Kusama's new installation All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins is filled with yellow and black plastic pumpkins

In Islington, the exhibition features a new installation titled All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins.

A room covered entirely in mirrors is filled with glowing, yellow and black plastic pumpkins, which appear to stretch on forever when a viewer steps inside the dark room and peers at the repeating reflection.

Yayoi Kusama installation
The new installation is the artist's first mirror pumpkin room since 1991

It is the artist's first mirror pumpkin room since 1991, when she created the iconic work that would represent Japan at the 1993 Venice Art Biennale.

The room fuses some of Kusama's biggest artistic obsessions – squash plants, polka-dot patterns and infinite space – and is complemented by a trio of polished bronze pumpkin sculptures sitting close by.

Yayoi Kusama installation
The exhibition also includes a trio of polished bronze pumpkin sculptures

"Pumpkins have been a great comfort to me since my childhood," said Kusama. "They speak to me of the joy of living."

"They are humble and amusing at the same time, and I have and always will celebrate them in my art."

Yayoi Kusama installation
Chandelier of Grief. Chandelier of Grief features a rotating chandelier that throws up dramatic reflections around a mirrored room

Another new take on her Infinity Mirrored Room series is called Chandelier of Grief.

It features a rotating chandelier in its centre, which throws up dramatic reflections when struck by bursts of light.

Yayoi Kusama installation
Where the Lights in My Heart Go comprises a polished stainless steel cube punctured with small holes

A further mirror room explores the potential of natural illumination. Titled Where the Lights in My Heart Go, the polished stainless steel cube is punctured with small holes, creating a constellation of stars for the viewer observing from within.

This work sits in the gallery's garden beside Kusama's 1966 installation of floating stainless steel spheres, Narcissus Garden, which is on permanent display in the pond. Another version of the sculpture is currently installed at Philip Johnson's iconic Glass House in Connecticut.

Yayoi Kusama installation
The artist's My Eternal Soul paintings are on show at the gallery's other location in Mayfair

Also exhibited at Victoria Miro are the latest iterations in Kusama's Infinity Nets and My Eternal Soul paintings, which are spread across both of the gallery's locations.

Kusama famously creates all of her work in a studio near the Tokyo psychiatric facility in which she has lived, voluntarily, since 1977, having reported experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations her whole life.

Yayoi Kusama installation
Kusama has voluntarily lived in a Tokyo psychiatric facility in since 1977, having reported experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations her whole life

Prior to her admission, she spent a period of time living and working in New York City, where she was part of the avant-garde art scene.

A retrospective of her 60-year career recently went on display at Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, which brought together everything from the 87-year-old artist's early drawings and sketchbooks through to her iconic installations.

Kusama has also previously created a concept store for fashion brand Louis Vuitton at London's Selfridges department store, which again featured her signature polka-dot patterns.