The spaces we design have order and understanding: plans, elevations, a parti. The spaces we inhabit contain things we recognize: named objects that give meaning and security; borders and boundaries that we can see. But when you enter an Infinity Room, there?s none of that. You are ?in space, where there is no reference to anything else. Kusama has created an un-space, an illusory space. Or maybe the opposite, as the title has it, an infinite space. To those of us whose profession is predicated on defining, measuring, and crafting physical space, it?s thrilling.
Photo by Cathy Carver. Courtesy of David Zwirmer
Like The Weather Project, Olafur Eliasson?s 2003 installation at the Tate Modern, and Moshe Safdie?s Yad Vashem Children?s Holocaust Memorial completed in Jerusalem in 1987, the Infinity Rooms have lights and mirrors that reflect each other to expand the dimensions of the room beyond comprehension. (The material list includes wood, metal, glass mirrors, plastic, acrylic panel, rubber, LED lighting, acrylic balls and water.) Kusama has arranged a series of very compact rooms?in material terms, less than 14 feet by 10 feet and with a platform barely large enough for two or three people to crowd onto?but once you are inside, the dimensions vanish. The orbs of light seem to be floating in space, and no matter which way you look, you will see more and more and more lights, with no end, everywhere, with the exception of a small black strip of floor on which you stand. You?l...