In vibrant hues of crimson and emerald green, Infinity Nets [XAZ] is test.mes nt to Yayoi Kusama’s captivating mastery of spatial abstraction. Executed in 1999, the present work marks the apex of a period of major and highly celebrated retrospectives that wholly solidified Kusama’s status and significance within the context of the contemporary art canon. In its intricately constructed surface of undulating forms, Infinity Nets [XAZ] is a brilliant example from the artist’s most iconic and celebrated body of work. A mesmeric corpus produced across a period of over fifty years, the Infinity Nets serve as the cornerstone of Kusama’s artistic practice, and the foundation for the remainder of her painterly and sculptural output.

Kusama first started the Infinity Nets in June 1958, shortly after moving from Japan to New York City. Driven by a great ambition to become a successful artist and rival the dominant male voices of the t.mes , she responded to the prevailing avant-garde language of Abstract Expressionism by turning personal psychological impulse into an ingenious formal concern. Indeed, the Infinity Nets mark a manifestation of and coping mechanism for Kusama’s obsessive-compulsive disorder and hallucinations brought on by a diagnosed psychological condition. Kusama struggled with visions of infinitely oscillating, kaleidoscopic patterns throughout her childhood in Japan, the memories of which she has described in her own words: “I was always standing at the centre of the obsession, over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me" (Yayoi Kusama cited in: Laura Hoptman, Yayoi Kusama, London, 2000, p. 103). Although she took on the all-over compositional modus of the abstract expressionist painters, Kusama developed all-encompassing visual semantics that privileged repetition and infinity, ultimately defying categrorisation or affiliation to any specific artistic movement. In Japan, her earliest work was considered Surrealist, while the 1960s brought group exhibitions alongside Pop artists and the European ZERO; indeed, the breadth of her practice has spanned performance, video, sculpture, installation, and even literature. Amongst this diverse body of work, however, it is the Infinity Nets that stand as the most iconic and enduring iteration of her ground-breaking practice.

On the surface of Infinity Nets [XAZ], Kusama’s labyrinthine web of undulating loops pulsates with irrepressible force, drawing the viewer towards the shimmering spaces contained within the tightly woven skeins of vibrant pigment. Working with a focus both obsessive and meditative, Kusama moved her brush quickly across the surface of her canvases with precise, minute flicks of the wrist, carefully weaving the complex skein of overlapping loops to create an undulating pattern. Produced decades after the first, intimately scaled examples of the Infinity Net series, the rich surface of Infinity Nets [XAZ] continues that legacy, employing the same repetitive and hypnotic mark-making that characterises the very best of Kusama’s oeuvre. In works such as the present, Kusama radically redefines the nature of abstract painting in bold defiance of gestural abstraction. While her compositions retain the pared down aesthetic of Minimalist painting, they lack the movement’s characteristically harsh, impersonal tone: here, Kusama invites viewers to experience a taste of the hallucinatory visions of oscillating, kaleidoscopic patterns that plague her psyche. Exuding a spell-biding aura of abstract specificity, Infinity Nets [XAZ] achieves an infinitely self-perpetuating momentum that engulfs and overwhelms even as it entrances and enthralls.