Infinity Nets WHXOTLO, 2006
Acrylic on canvas
200×1000 cm (78.7×393.7 inches)
Signed ‘Yayoi Kusama’ in English; dated ‘2006’; titled ‘INFINITY-NETS WHXOTLO’ (on the reverse)

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 21 November 2014
HKD 18,040,000 / USD 2,325,351

Source: Christie’s
YAYOI KUSAMA (B.1929) (christies.com)

At 10 meters long, Infinity Nets WHXOTLO is the largest painting by Yayoi Kusama to appear at auction. An intricate latticework of gestural loops and strokes in silver extends across an unbroken plane of black. In its abstraction and minimalism, Infinity Nets WHXOTLO begins to resemble a landscape without beginning or end, not unlike those of Chinese artists Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh Chun. Against the twentieth-century backdrop of a rapidly modernizing Asia, Kusama, like Zao and Chu, represents a general but distinct departure from Asian art traditions as a result of having spent much time in Europe and America.

Kusama’s art becomes not just an exchange but a convergence between eastern and western art practices, resulting in a style that is uniquely her own. Infinity Nets WHXOTLO calls to mind Monet’s Water Lilies. The reflection of light and sky on the surface of the pond in Monet’s garden is the main subject of his painting. Originally intended as a full-circle panorama, Water Lilies is an “illusion of an endless whole of water without horizon or bank,” giving the viewer “refuge for peaceful meditation.” Kusama’s painting similarly envelopes the viewer in a shimmering, serene embrace.  This prescient colossal piece stretching ten meters evokes infinite and transcendent space. It questions illusion and reality as their appearance changes over time in the viewer’s perception. The delicate impasto conveys a sense of solidity, suggesting a net that veils a deeper void. Kusama’s subtle variations in the impasto create patterns within the all-over field of dots, which unite and drift as one’s eyes meander across the painting.