A large exhibition of Yayoi Kusama arrived in New York at Chelsea’s David Zwirner mega-gallery. It features giant pumpkins, towering flowers, trippy paintings, and one of the artist’s famous “Infinity Rooms.” A version of the iconic mirror space hasn’t been shown in the city since 2021, and visitors to the exhibit’s public opening on Thursday, May 11 did what Manhattanites do all too well: line up.

THE exposure is until July 21, but many Kusama superfans couldn’t wait that long: 200 people won the chance to see the show early via a social media lottery. Last night, a small group of Zwirner staff coped with the chaos. Doors opened to the public at 6 p.m., but eager viewers started arriving at 4 p.m. Two hours later, hundreds of attendees had formed a queue that stretched from the gallery entrance on 19th Street to 11th Avenue, crossed the wide thoroughfare, and eventually wrapped around another corner on 20th street.

“I love it all,” said Isabella Bravo, a New York-based real estate agent. Hyperallergic. She recently saw the Kusama pop-up at Louis Vuitton in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District (which featured a bizarre life-size robot by the artist). She also saw the 2018 Infinite mirrors exhibition at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles.

“Luckily I booked it ahead of time,” Bravo said of the California show. “The line was the same script – it went around the building and there were a lot of people who couldn’t stand the LA heat.” Bravo was very excited to see the Infinity Room.

Further down the line, Manuela Valencia and Zoraida Echeverri were waiting to see Kusama’s work for the first time. They had arrived in New York two days earlier from Bogotá, Colombia.

“A friend of mine showed me a page of things to do in New York,” said Echeverri, a psychologist. Hyperallergic. “And it’s free.” She had also seen Kusama’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton.

Ellie, a New Yorker who preferred to call herself by her first name, arrived around 4 p.m. She didn’t know Kusama’s work until she saw him two years ago at the New York Botanical Gardens, but the show left a strong impression on him. “As I researched her, I became more and more obsessed,” Ellie said.

Inside, the exhibit spans four cavernous halls. The first presents the artist’s latest series of pumpkins, an essential part of Kusama’s iconography. Longing for pumpkin love, love in my heart (2023) includes three enormous sculptures. The gigantic fruits tower over their viewers and form a series of curved walls between which visitors can walk.

The second space contains the Infinity Mirror room. Entitled “Dreaming of the sphericity of the Earth, I would offer my love” (2023), the work is confined in a stainless steel box with blue, green, red and orange circular windows. It looks like an enlarged version of some kind of children’s toy. A window at ground level is revealed to be a door, and a guard ushers visitors inside. They crouch through the small opening and then have two minutes to spend in the space. The interior is dotted with Kusama’s signature stitches. True to its name, mirrors make space seem endless.

The gallery behind the Infinity Room is easy to miss, but here Kusama’s mastery of optical illusion is on full display. Thirty-six paintings collectively titled EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE (2021-2023) line the white walls. They feature dots, smiley faces, and the mind-boggling impression that they’re concave. Kusama has painted large circles in many centers of the canvases that seem to sink inwards.

The last room presents three enormous sculptures which share the name of the exhibition, I spend every day kissing flowers (2023). Like the pumpkins, these vast works are larger than the viewers of the room.

The whole show is remarkably compatible with Instagram. An iPhone camera captures flawless selfies in the infinity room and perfectly lit shots of the paintings. Visitors pose between the oversized sculptures and take photos of themselves in the shiny surfaces of the works. Work is always captured in one way or another. In light of Kusama’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton – which produces handbags, shirts and ties emblazoned with the artist’s iconography – Hindley Wang wrote an opinion piece for Hyperallergic to think about the commodification not only of Kusama’s work, but also of the artist.

David Zwirner is one of the blue chip galleries around, and not exactly a place known for its inclusivity. The Kusama exhibition is free – like all gallery exhibitions – but it’s worth remembering that rarely do people outside wealthy circles or the so-called “art world” even consider entering a gallery. art.

“It was totally worth it,” said Grayson Willis, a New Yorker working on a master’s degree in contemporary art. Hyperallergic. She was more familiar with the artist’s work than some of the other visitors: Willis said she had traveled all over the world to see Kusama’s exhibits. “To see such a great show in New York was a dream.”