Kusama Yayoi Infinity Nets (2BD)

signed and titled in English and dated 2004 on the reverse

Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo
Cellar Gallery, Tokyo
Private Asian Collection
Acquired by the present owner from the above

This work is generally in good condition. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
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This work is accompanied with an artwork registration card issued by the artist's studio 

It has been fifty years since Kusama Yayoi travelled to New York at the end of her twenties, at a time when it was entirely inconceivable that the young, unassuming artist would become one of the most influential vanguards of contemporary art. Five decades later in present day, Kusama has become the most eminent female Japanese artist, creating an oeuvre that stems across various styles, shifting from minimalism to pop. Her often psychedelic verve has incorporated works such as colossal pumpkins, phallus-like soft sculptures, polka-dot collages, and amongst her most famous and iconic—the Infinity Nets. First created in New York, during a time when Kusama was amongst figures such as Andy Warhol and Donald Judd, the Infinity Nets works garnered immense attention, and ushered the then young artist to the forefront of contemporary art. In his article “Reviews and Previews: New Names This Month- Yayoi Kusama” from Artnews, Donald Judd commented, “Yayoi Kusama is an original painter. The expression transcends the question of whether it is Oriental or American. Although it is something of both, certainly of such Americans as Rothko, Still and Newman, it is not at all a synthesis and is thoroughly independent.”  Indeed, the artist’s minimalistic white strokes atop a grey canvas were a quiet but powerful tour-de-force, a monochrome feat that was both mesmerising as it towered above its viewer. Painted in the mid-2000s, the current Infinity Nets can be considered exceptional. Featuring a rare but auspicious colour palette of gold and red, the work showcases a crucial transition in her aesthetics during the later stage of the series. The current lot is also a distillation of the artist’s mental-scape. Having experienced serious hallucinations since she was young, the organic pattern created with a simple movement of the wrist is essentially a meditative channel for the artist to transcend the plague of ongoing hallucinations to the real world. It is also a crucial foundation upon which the artist extends her later practice beyond the canvas. In the present lot, one can feel the full impact of Kusama’s fastidious method. Each individual stroke and loop has been executed to pure perfection, each representing a cathartic gesture for the artist from the nightmares that have troubled her since her childhood. The present Infinity Nets can thus be read as a small piece of Kusama’s universe:  “My nets grew beyond myself and beyond the canvasses I was covering with them. They began to cover the walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe. I was standing at the center of the obsession over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me.”¹

1 Udo Kultermann, “Yayoi Kusama and the Concept of Obsession in Contemporary Art”, Yayoi Kusama: Obsession