Yayoi Kusama review – about as artistic as a lava lamp

Victoria Miro Gallery, London
Her mirror installation will inspire selfies – but if she’s the greatest artist of our time, it doesn’t say much for our time

Visitors who secure precious tickets to stand inside Yayoi Kusama’s new installation will get, I was told, around a minute in this dark mirrored space where spherical lanterns appear to proliferate into infinity, their colours changing in psychedelic sync. It’s enough time to take a selfie – and what else does anyone want from art these days? Abstraction was once a desperately serious pursuit of the ineffable. Veteran art hero Kusama turns it into shallow instant beauty that’s as fun as a fizzy drink and about as nourishing.

I had as long as I liked inside Infinity Mirrored Room – My Heart Is Dancing into the Universe and I was as blissed out as the next idiot. It helped that I’d watched the Marvel film Doctor Strange the night before and felt like I’d become Benedict Cumberbatch in a cloak, floating in some hippy cosmos where the stars kept changing colours.

Related: Yayoi Kusama: the world's favourite artist?

Yayoi Kusama: The Moving Moment When I Went to the Universe is at Victoria Miro Gallery, London N1 from 3 October to 21 December.

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