Yayoi Kusama I Want Your Tears To Flow Exhibition hypebeast.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hypebeast.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Kusama, 92, has become a social media sensation for creating a number of these “tiny chambers”, illuminated by minuscule lights and lined with mirrors, which reflect each other in an infinite number of configurations. Walking into one of those on show here is like entering a “hallucinatory palace of light”; you find yourself “drifting through a star-spangled infinitude”, hypnotised by “prismatic glints”. The experience is “beautiful” but “disquieting”.
Kusama, who has been affected by hallucinations for much of her life, makes art that tries to show things “only the mind can see”, said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. Much of it has been fascinating; not these, though. The Tate allows you only two-minute dives into these rooms for your tenner. “Time enough for a selfie”, and not much more: it’s an Instagram experience posing as art. The Infinity Mirror Rooms aren’t even all that spectacular: the second, larger one, features lights glowing, dimming a
It is difficult to escape from reality. When reading a book or watching a film, you might just start to believe that you’re not in Durham. But there is always something that brings you back – the sheen of fingerprints on your MacBook; the swishing of flares – tiny distractions and incongruities. In a gallery, a painting always has a boundary and is contained as something to be observed. You can only experience the work of art from a safe distance demarcated by alarm bells and cordons.
Despite its transparency, that literal space between yourself and the work cushions the experience. Barnett Newman tried to resolve this by telling people to stand only a ‘short distance’ from his paintings. Undoubtedly, a practical and cheap solution, but perhaps not the most effective. Immersive artworks are more deliberate in their techniques.
How uplifting art shows are easing us out of lockdown bbc.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bbc.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.