By Margherita Cole on May 26, 2023

Installation view, “Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, May 11–July 21, 2023 © Yayoi Kusama (Courtesy of David Zwirner)

This epic exhibition features massive pumpkin and polka dot sculptures, dozens of paintings, and an infinity mirror room. It is Yayoi Kusama to the fullest!

From polka dot pumpkins to mirror rooms, it is hard to mistake Yayoi Kusama‘s art for anyone else’s work. A new exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York, titled I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, assembles some of the many different facets of the artist’s oeuvre, featuring massive sculptures, colorful paintings, and immersive installations. The extensive collection is stretched across David Zwirner’s spaces at 519, 525, and 533 West 19th Street.

Installation view, “Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, May 11–July 21, 2023 © Yayoi Kusama (Courtesy of David Zwirner)

The title of the show comes from three large-scale sculptures that are featured in the exhibition. These pieces depict massive blooms colored in bold hues and a mix of polka dot and abstract prints. “The flowers convey a duality, present throughout Kusama’s work, between life and death, celebration and mourning, figuration, and abstraction, with each opposite simultaneously pushed to its limits,” the exhibition states. Flowers and other parts of the natural world are recurring themes in Kusama’s art and a lifelong interest.

ayoi Kusama, 2020. Photo: Yusuke Miyazaki © Yayoi Kusama (Courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner, Ota Fine Arts, and Victoria Miro)

Also included in the exhibition is another series of monumental sculptures. Titled Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love of My Heart, these massive polka dot pumpkin works resemble an undulating wall that wraps around the room and creates an enclosure for visitors. “Pumpkins have been a great comfort to me since my childhood; 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,” Kusama says.

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There will also be an Infinity Mirror Room, titled Dreaming of Earth’s Spericity, I would Offer My Love.

Installation view, “Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, May 11–July 21, 2023 © Yayoi Kusama (Courtesy of David Zwirner)

The circular openings allow light to enter the immersive space.

nstallation view, “Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, May 11–July 21, 2023 © Yayoi Kusama (Courtesy of David Zwirner)

More: Yayoi Kusama’s Massive Colorful Sculptures Fill Entire Rooms in NYC