Infinity Nets (APQ), 1999
Acrylic on canvas
100×80.5 cm (39.4×31.7 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 1999 “Infinity Nets (APQ)”‘ on the reverse

Provenance
Private Collection
Sotheby’s, New York, 6 October 2005, lot 109
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Phillips London: 5 October 2018
GBP 465,000 / USD 609,356

Source: Phillips
Yayoi Kusama – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 27 October 2018 | Phillips

 

 

Painted in 1999, amidst a period of major retrospectives cementing Yayoi Kusama’s unique place within the context of the contemporary art canon, Infinity Nets (APQ) exemplifies the Japanese artist’s most iconic motif, in which she transposes hallucinatory visions on canvas in the form of ever-multiplying circular shapes. From afar, the meter-tall Infinity Nets (APQ) seems to move, its variably-sized dots swarming and fluttering across the gold-painted canvas, as though mimicking the movement of a heartbeat.

Upon closer inspection, however, the circles become increasingly static and imperfect, and the inversion of each color’s disposition becomes apparent, revealing the motionlessness of the painting’s gridded structure. As the picture plane’s dark purple background swallows, the repetitive semicircles arranged atop it and spits them out in turn, repeating the motion in an endless and hypnotic fashion, the effect of ‘infinity and unboundedness’ visually takes form. Infinity Nets (APQ) thus epitomizes Kusama’s extensive Infinity Nets series, ceaselessly revisiting the interaction between monochromatic pigment and rhythmic lattice structures. As with the majority of works from this series, the present painting indeed conjures a sense of movement and depth, like a net afloat on water, or the topographical undulation of a landscape.