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Vinik foundation brings Yayoi Kusama's famed Infinity Room to Tampa Museum of Art

The colorful piece 'Love Is Calling' is filled with soft, polka dotted-tentacles and is an Instagrammer's dream.
Photos: Chelsea Tatham | 10News

TAMPA, Fla. -- Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is famous for creating works of interactive art that let visitors walk through parts of her imagination.

These Infinity Rooms are world famous for their color, creativity and seemingly endless spaces. The Tampa Museum of Art is getting one of these pieces for the first time this fall.

The piece 'Love is Calling' will be on display at the museum starting Friday through Feb. 14, 2019. It's part of the museum's new "Season of Love" alongside works from Patricia Cronin and Robert Indiana.

'Love is Calling' was created in 2013 and is Kusama's largest Infinity Room to date. She's made 20 of the visually endless pieces.

The piece came to the museum through the Vinik Family Foundation, created by Jeff and Penny Vinik. Previous immersive art exhibits brought to Tampa Bay by the Viniks include The Beach Tampa and The Art of the Brick.

"We were so taken with it," Penny Vinik said Wednesday during a preview of 'Love is Calling.' "You find yourself transported to another world with the mirrors, colors and lights."

The 'Love is Calling' exhibition is a colorful, polka dotted-tentacle dreamscape. Visitors walk through a mirror-lined room covered in inflated tentacles positioned like cave stalactites and stalagmites. As they explore, they'll hear a recording of Kusama reading her poem "Residing in a Castle of Shed Tears" in a loop.

"One of the great things about all the art that Penny and I like is that kids can enjoy them, adults can enjoy them, and we all get different meanings out of them," Jeff Vinik said.

Joanna Robotham, the curator of modern and contemporary art at the Tampa Museum of Art, said the museum is thrilled to share an iconic Kusama Infinity Room with the Tampa Bay area.

She said Kusama, 89, now lives in Tokyo and a mental health institution voluntarily. Though Kusama established an art studio across the street from the institution so she can continue to paint and sculpt. Robotham said the museum worked closely with Kusama's representatives to bring Love is Calling to Tampa and set it up just how Kusama intended.

Kusama's Infinity Room is on display starting Sept. 28 through Feb. 14, 2019. Timed tickets are required for the exhibit, and only 10 people are allowed in the Love is Calling room at a time.

Museum tickets are $15 adults, $7.50 seniors/teachers/military, $5 children 6 and under, and free for students with valid ID.

More information and tickets available at the Tampa Museum of Art's website.

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