The much-heralded and much-hyped Yayoi Kusama retrospective opening Saturday at the Art Gallery of Ontario is renowned for its so-called Infinity Mirrors, small mirrored interiors where the viewer is allowed 20 seconds to experience various permutations of infinite space before making way for the next person in line.
Yet the Toronto exhibition also features a wide range of the Japanese artist's other work dating as far back as the 1950s, paintings, drawings and sculptures you can contemplate for as long as you want. These include A Woman from 1952, a small work on paper which may take a few moments to recognize as a female form; the figure is just a thick black outline, the body a large circle, the head a smaller one, the limbs feathery appendages marked with the red polka dots that were to become Kusama's signature. You can see right through this woman to the pastel ground behind the figure.