“I love painting so much that nothing else matters.” Yayoi Kusama
Forming a part of Yayoi Kusama’s signature Infinity Nets series, this expansive canvas immediately immerses the viewer in its looping, undulating forms. Each ring of paint varies organically and ever so slightly from those that it precedes and follows, which continue to loop infinitely through the space. The endless circles of paint which cover the surface of the painting create a mesmerizing tension between the bounded and the limitless, the finite and the infinite.
The first Infinity Net in this series was produced in 1958, and Kusama has returned to and reformulated this pivotal theme throughout her career, working in New York and Tokyo. Kusama articulates the infinity nets through her paintings, drawings, etchings, and sculpture. The motif of the continuous, all-encompassing net frequently appears in her work, depicting our infinite universe, restrained solely by the physical constraints of canvas, paper, and other media. The viewer both observes the net objectively and is engulfed in the net subjectively, comprehending Kusama’s own vision of infinity as one that is trapped, not free.
A visionary artist, Kusama suffers from a nervous condition that plays a role in shaping her worldview and, in turn, the art she produces. Often labeled as psychedelic, hypnotic, and hallucinatory, Infinity Net paintings serve to transport us into Kusama’s frame of consciousness. Individually achieved, meticulous loops in varying shades of white and pinkare juxtaposed against the larger picture of repetitive movement. This dynamic motion seems to have a unique rhythm that is not easily traceable across the surface of the painting. Our eyes are drawn across the work, as different points of interest rise and fall, catching our itinerant attention. The viewer feels boundless and confined at once, mesmerized by the repetitive brush strokes which seem to surround us, leaving no escape from the Infinity Net. Though constrained by the borders of the canvas, the net gives the viewer a sense of the work expanding beyond its frame, wall and gallery space, and outwards into our world and cosmic universe. In this way, both the miniscule part and the greater whole are crucial to the Infinity Net and serve to make these nets inspire awe in each viewer.