YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Infinity-Nets (T.OWQ), 2005
Acrylic on canvas
72.5 x 91 cm (28 1/2 x 35 7/8 inches)
Signed, titled twice and dated 2005 (on the reverse)
Provenance
Gallery Sekiryu, Matsumoto
Private Collection, Japan
Auction History
Sotheby’s London: 6 March 2024
Estimated: GBP 600,000 – 800,000
GBP 850,900 / USD 1,078,940
Mesmerizing and luminous because of, rather than despite, an economy of means, Infinity-Nets (T.OWQ) belongs to Yayoi Kusama’s most ethereal and vaporous series of paintings which have formed the cornerstone of her artistic practice. The canvas is covered by an interlinking network of unique, monochromatic white loops over a black ground, creating a shimmering, woven texture that simultaneously attracts and repels the eye. Kusama’s complex manipulation of color and texture creates nuanced shadows which bring a distinct tonality to the painting’s surface. Elegantly executed in thickly applied acrylic, the complex skein of overlapping loops writhes and undulates, creating a lyrical system of patterns which belies the individuated impasto of every brushstroke. Strongly reminiscent of Ruth Asawa’s own looped meditations on material and form, Kusama’s Infinity Nets consistently confound conventions of pictorial volume and illusionistic space.
“Those are paintings without beginning, end, or center. The entire canvas would be occupied by monochromatic net. This endless repetition caused a kind of dizzy, empty, hypnotic feeling.”
At once meditatively simple and fascinatingly complex, the Infinity Nets occupy a distinct aesthetic liminality encompassing gestural Abstract Expressionism, contemplative Minimalism and even ritualistic performance. Comparable to the monochrome paintings of Robert Ryman or Lucio Fontana in their emphasis on seriality and grasp of materiality, Kusama’s practice links strongly to crucial tenets of Minimalism and Post-Minimalism, possibly as a result of her close relationships with artists such as Donald Judd and Eva Hesse. However, Kusama’s Infinity Nets diverge significantly from Minimalist art. Although on first appearance rote and repetitive in form, the result is insistently and stridently handmade. Created by deliberately unsystematic, accumulating patterns, they appear as manifestations of planned chaos; indeed, there is an organic, almost topographical aspect to the works. Intensely psychological, there is also a further mystical element to these paintings that imbues them with performative or ritualistic undertones, further distinguishing them from any prevailing art movement.
YAYOI KUSAMA IN HER NEW YORK STUDIO, CIRCA 1958-59 / IMAGE/ARTWORK: YAYOI KUSAMA
For Kusama, replicating the net motif in paint is as much a meditative practice of repetition as it is a philosophical practice of disintegrating the bounds between finitude and infinitude. She has openly discussed her artmaking as a form of escape from a lifetime of mental illness, marked by episodes of “self-obliteration.” Across her oeuvre, Kusama recreates and perhaps thereby wrests control of this overwhelming overstimulation; we observe this “all-over” creative vision, a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, most clearly in her monumental Infinity Net paintings, but also in her mesmerizing Infinity Mirror Rooms and even in her group performances in late-1960s New York where performers and environment were united by painted polka dots.
Across Kusama’s practice and emblematized by her use of the net motif, the artist encourages the integration of the natural environment, our psychological world and the physical body. Infinity-Nets (T.OWQ) emblematizes the artist’s found solution for her psychosomatic anxiety, serenely exulting in a single-minded, entirely absorbing celebration of form ad infinitum.