It is wrong to call this infinity but to left, right, front and behind, the room does appears to stretch, endlessly indeed. You’ll think it possible to fall through the floor, since the suggestion of infinitude is a gaping maw; just as the sky is no longer a limit but also imbued with a sense of regression to deep space. As the title suggests, every which way is mirrored.
The trick, admittedly a good one, is to pave the room with colour-changing light patterns. It goes equally for the ceiling. Central to this ‘infinite’ octagon is a mirrorball too big for any dancefloor of this size. The lights duly boogie away in silence and this silver orb sends the eye in all directions.
Outside, it’s a plain MDF box. All that is infinite within the cosmos (love, spirit, god, time, space) is constructed like this, by chippies and glaziers. The world we share with the builders of infinity rooms is finite; death is final. There is no heaven, no hell (Imagine!), no getting away from the limits of the self.
In fact you must fix your image in this hall of mirrors with one of the (infinite) number of selfies that have been taken in one of these installations. I took one too, natch. I had literally no better idea how to behave in this dopamine cage so beloved of…of….of everyone I can just about think of.
To love Infinity Room is to love oneself, maybe. You (alone, standing there agog, from top to toe in a retro-futuristic nightclub environment) are the element of this piece on which Kusama really gets to work. See yourself reproduced again and again, doubled, and octupled. Selfie mode is unavoidable. In this controlled space you are given a life without horizon, but without release.
Kusama has created more than 20 of these installations. A previous example was fully booked for a run at Tate of almost three years. This one, at the smaller commercial premises of Victoria Miro, was fully sold out before it had even opened. As paintings upstairs remind you, the Japanese artist has recently joined the ranks of artists who can be identified in store window dressing, diffusion range fashion, and arrays of cute art-flavoured gifts. She is winning the social media game as well.
In this East London space, where paintings and sculpture wait for sales, Infinity Room is a potent shop window. When one considers the business objective of this exhibition (‘EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE’) it is hard not to consider the (seemingly) infinite ways in which finance circulates around this city.
But there is always only a limited supply of money. Value is infinite and that is to be found in art. I hated the claustrophobia of this piece, but with reservations.
Yayoi Kusama: EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE can be seen at Victoira Miro until 2 November 2024.
