Infinity Nets (HIWO), 2015
Acrylic on canvas
194×194 cm (76.4×76.4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘HIWO INFINITY-NETS YAYOI KUSAMA 2015’ (on the reverse)

 

Provenance
Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo
Private collection, Europe
Acquired from the above by the present owner

 

Christie’s New-York: 16 November 2016
USD 1,567,500

Source: Christie’s 
Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) (christies.com)

 

In Infinity Nets (HIWO), Yayoi Kusama has woven an intricate, lace-like web in paint. The delicate veil of painted swoops and swirls that sweep across the surface extend to all edges of the canvas, suggesting the continuation of the net into the space beyond the painting. Constantly moving between opacity and transparency to an undulating, hypnotic effect, the painting offers the illusion of movement. Kusama describes the inspiration behind her Infinity Net series as the hallucinatory visions the artist has experience since the age of 10 during which various patterns appear on everything within her field of vision.

No two marks are the same here. The artist made a conscious effort to concentrate on each tiny moment in the painting to ensure that all marks are distinct. This exacting and meditative, even obsessive, working method insists upon the full attention. The result is a net that transfixes the viewer’s gaze, capturing us in the painting’s rhythmic pulse and making visible the invisible cosmic forces that surround and connect us. In the subtle, shifting surfaces of the Infinity Nets, Kusama evokes a transcendental space that lies beyond the limits of the human imagination. Suggesting the vastness of the cosmos and the infinitesimal forms of cells or atoms, the complex matrix of swirls and dots stands as the ultimate cipher for the incomprehensible dimensions of infinity.