The Space of Infinity In 1963 Kusama made the first of her ongoing series titled “Infinity Rooms”. In this complex installation Kusama built a custom space completely lined with mirrored glass and hundreds of soft phallic forms made of white stuffed fabric with red polka dots. Looking in, an observer experienced the illusion of endless time and space emphasized by the seemingly continuous multiplication of worm-like forms. However, it was “Peep Show or Endless Love Show” made in 1966 that allowed Kusama to fully represent a metaphysical experience. “Peep Show or Endless Love Show” consisted of a mirrored hexagonal room with thousands of blinking, coloured lights flashing in sync with rock’n’roll music. As its title suggests, viewers experienced the work by looking in slots at eye-level. But rather than an erotic dancer, the viewer saw only their reflection, ad infinitum via the surrounding mirrored walls. Like the psychedelic light shows of the period and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, Kusama’s “Peep Show or Endless Love Show”, positioned offer the viewer freedom from convention. Unlike Kusama’s earlier “Infinity Rooms”, her later installations are less about creating mind-blowing obliteration effects and more about creating spaces of peace and contemplation. Her new works such as “Fireflies on the Water” (2000) and “Infinity Mirrored Room: The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away” (2013) are comprised of tiny coloured LED lights floating in the dark. They create experiences similar to looking down on a city at night from the perspective of outer space. Curator and writer of Kusama’s monograph Katherine Taft, describes Kusama’s most recent installations as, “…introspective spaces for perceiving, listening and feeling.” While Kusama constructs specific and controlled environments in which to create immersive experiences, Richard prefers the unrestrained potential of wide open public space. Because of their capacity to transform, Richard’s sculptures have been commissioned for notable sites around the world including The JW Marriot Hotel, Chartered Bank in Hong Kong and Tutor Campus Center in California. Like Kusama’s latest installations, his monumental outdoor works create opportunities for meaningful collective experience and contemplation. With their static and yet fluctuating nature, Richard’s monumental Infinity sculptures have the capacity to alter the way we see and relate to the familiarities of space and time. For example, in the playful work titled “Ball and Jax” commissioned in 2016 by the Ja Ru Toy company, Richard creates an open-air game court out of the company’s headquarters, expanding the experiential
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