YAYOI KUSAMA
Infinity Net (TWHOQ), 2006
Acrylic on canvas, in three parts
Each 194×130.3 cm (76.4×51.2 inches)
Overall 194×390.9 cm (76.4×153.9 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 2006 INFINITY NETS TWHOQ’ (on the reverse)

 

Provenance
Private Collection, Asia
Acquired from the above by the previous owner circa 2013-2015
Christie’s Hong Kong, 25 May 2019, Lot 79
Acquired from the above sale by the current owner

Auction History

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 28,000,000 – 38,000,000
HKD 53,250,000 / USD 6,822,549

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

REPEAT SALE

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 25 May 2019
Estimated: HKD 25,000,000 – 35,000,000
HKD 27,725,000 / USD 3,532,252

YAYOI KUSAMA (JAPAN, B. 1929) (christies.com)

 

Painted in 2006, Yayoi Kusama’s monumental triptych Infinity Net (TWHOQ) is a hypnotic web of shimmering gold set against a ground of vivid orange. The painting was included in Kusama’s acclaimed 2013 retrospective Yayoi Kusama, A Dream I Dreamed, which toured internationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, Seoul Arts Center, and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, among others. Triptychs from the artist’s Infinity Net series are rare and the present work is rendered in lustrous acrylic paint, which Kusama has used since the beginning of the 1980s for its quick-drying properties; Infinity Net gleams as the delicacies of its contours subtly unfold across the canvas.

Like billowing clouds or frothy waves, the meticulous and repetitive gold blurs swoop and conjoin across the orange ground. Her characteristic lace-like patterning shifts capriciously throughout Infinity Net , and to look at and comprehend the painting is to be brought along for an unpredictable journey of ocular discovery.

During her septuagenarian years, Yayoi Kusama painted the monumental triptych Infinity Nets (TWHOQ) rendered in countless nets, an iconic motif she continues to depict over six decades of her artistic career. Vigorously executed, these glimmering gold loops of pigment create negative spaces around the vermilion dots, forming an undulating net field that mesmerizes the infinite expanse of shimmering ocean waves—a sight that fixated in the artist’s mind when she first flew to Seattle in 1957.

Reminiscing an image of the ocean, Infinity Nets (TWHOQ) choreographs a vigorous living field with cosmic depth and creates layers of transformative spaces across three canvases. The cloud-like, organic oscillating nets contrast with her early Nets painting like Infinity Nets Yellow (1960), which Judd would refer to as ‘shallow in space’ and ‘close to the surface’. The present work was included in Kusama’s acclaimed 2013 retrospective KUSAMA YAYOI, A Dream I Dreamed, which toured internationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, Seoul Arts Center, and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, among others. Its radiant colors of gold and vermilion mesmerizes a regenerative power of the universe that never ceases to fascinate Kusama, spelling a reach to eternity with the warmth of the sun.