While in Tokyo, I acquired tickets to two of the most sought-after art exhibits in town: Yayoi Kusama’s Self-Obliteration/Psychedelic World and teamLab Planets. Reservations are required and they both sell-out quickly.

I had my first experience with contemporary avant garde artist Yayoi’s immersive work last year while in Los Angeles and was eager to view more pieces from her collection and learn the credo of world peace and love for humanity that is evoked through her body of work. The current featured exhibit at the museum which bears her name, Yayoi Kusama’s Self Obliteration/Psychedelic World, opened on April 29. While listed as a museum though, I would classify it as a small gallery that was more limited than I anticipated offering no real insight into who Yayoi Kusama is as a person. To truly get a sense of her scope, I would recommend a traveling exhibit rather than this museum.

teamLab is an art collective that aims to create exhibits which explore the relationship between humanity and the world around them. In Planets, their current Tokyo-based exhibition, visitors become one with the tactile and light-based artwork. In the Water Gallery, for example, you walk down dark hallways pooled with water that barely reflect the minimal lighting and then step into a knee-deep pond in which your movement attracts digital koi drawn to your presence. The work is rendered in real time by a computer; it is not pre-recorded, nor set on a loop. The interaction between the viewer and the installation determines how the artwork looks.

As one can imagine, teamLab is selfie heaven and this is the part that slightly diminished the experience. It was hard to truly appreciate some of the work with so many people posing. It was also difficult to read artist statements to understand the piece you are experiencing. But perhaps that is the ultimate (intended or not) message on humanity’s interaction with the world—that we are only interested in it in a self-serving manner.