Renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama unveils one of her largest gallery exhibitions to date this evening in New York City at David Zwirner Galleries. The exhibition, titled I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, features new monumental sculptures and over thirty new paintings spread throughout three gallery spaces on West 19th Street in Manhattan. The show marks 10 years since Kusama’s debut at David Zwirner and the return of one of her most popular pieces, an infinity mirror room.
Three bold floral sculptures by Kusama transform the gallery space at 519 West 19th Street into a colorful, polka-dot-filled garden. Presented in the round, these sculptures offer a different view from every angle as their roots and leaves stretch out across the floor and their pink, red, and orange-hued petals bloom toward the ceiling,
More monumental sculptures can be experienced at 533 West 19th Street where visitors will find three undulating pumpkin sculptures. As you walk around and through the sculpture, the yellow pumpkins rise like walls to envelop you in black polka dots.
© YAYOI KUSAMA Courtesy of David Zwirner
Moving into the gallery space at 525 West 19th Street, thirty-six paintings, most of which are part of Kusama’s recent series EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE (2021–present), are on view alongside a new infinity mirror room titled Dreaming of Earth’s Sphericity, I Would Offer My Love (2023).
The first infinity mirror room that Kusama unveiled in New York City was part of her debut David Zwirner exhibition, I Who Have Arrived in Heaven, in 2013. The exhibit drew surprisingly large crowds, and the crowds returned again to wait in line in 2017 when Kusama returned with another infinity mirror room titled Infinity Nets. You can see Untapped New York’s photos from that exhibition here.
© YAYOI KUSAMA Courtesy of David Zwirner
All of the works currently on display incorporate Kusama’s signature visual elements of bright colors, repetitive patterns, and polka dots. These aesthetic elements represent Kusama’s fascination with the natural world, on a micro and macro level, from the cells of plants to the heavenly bodies of the universe.
Kusama’s work has been seen in New York many times over the past decade and now her work is now a permanent part of Grand Central Madison. Her monumental sculptures took over the New York Botanical Garden in 2021 with the site-specific exhibit Cosmic Worlds, and she designed a balloon for the 2019 Thanksgiving Day Parade.
I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers is free and open to the public from May 11th at 6pm ET until July 21st. Previous Kusama exhibits have had wait times of thirty minutes to over two hours, so plan accordingly!
Next, check out 16 Public Art Installations to See in May
