INFINITY NETS (G.E.R), 1999
Acrylic on canvas (in three parts)
194.3×389.9 cm (76.5×153.5 inches)
Signed, titled, dated 1999 and numbered on the reverse of each canvas

 

Provenance
Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo
Acquired by the present owner from the above in March 2006

 

Sotheby’s New-York: 20 June 2020
USD 3,620,000

 

Expanding outward in a delicate lattice of intricate loops and swirls, Yayoi Kusama’s extraordinary Infinity Nets G.E.R. is a triumphant testament to the enduring, mesmerizing power of the artist’s signature abstract mode. Executed in 1999, the present work marks the apex of a period of major and highly celebrated retrospectives that wholly solidified Kusama’s status and significance within the context of the contemporary art canon. In its intricately constructed surface of undulating forms, Infinity Nets G.E.R. is a superb exemplar from the artist’s iconic series of Infinity Nets; a mesmerizing body of work the artist has produced over a period of fifty years, these iconic works serve as the cornerstone of Kusama’s artistic practice, and the foundation for the remainder of her sculptures, installations, and varied painterly output. Executed across three towering panels, the enormous surface of Infinity Nets G.E.R. achieves the artist’s ultimate goal: to momentarily draw the viewer into Kusama’s own, definitive experience of infinity.

Enveloping the viewer within its gleaming surface, Infinity Nets G.E.R is at once meditative and emphatic, intricate and explosive, utterly abstract and entirely specific. Below the labyrinthine web of golden loops, the saturated azure hue of the painting’s ground invites the viewer to immerse him or herself within its turquoise depths. Kusama’s use of metallic pigment imbues the present work with an aura of exquisite light; the work is ethereal, texturally anomalous and full of reflected illumination. The artist’s innumerable brushstrokes pile onto one another, culminating in some parts of the canvas in mounds of expressive impasto, and congealing into radiating planes of pigment in others. Each dab of paint is laid with a punctilious devotion to the act of mark making, consuming the canvas in a field of texture. At first glance, the disparate layers of pigment are deceptively legible; yet upon further inspection, the hypnotic skeins of paints begin to dilate and pulsate, creating an extraordinary and intriguing visual interplay within the painting’s depths.