Beschreibung:

Yayoi Kusama Infinity Nets (OQ4) 2000 Acrylic on canvas. 63 3/4 x 51 1/4 in. (162 x 130.2 cm). Signed, titled and dated “Yayoi Kusama Infinity-Nets (OQ4) 2000” on the reverse.
Provenance Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo; Private Collection, Tokyo Catalogue Essay Nothing I do stays in the gallery space. Everything I do is a walk in my mind. There are no limits… As long as I have the energy, I will carry on. I’d like to live 200 or 300 years. Yayoi Kusama in J. McCurry, “Coming Full Circle,” The Guardian, June 6, 2009 The present lot is exemplary of the expansive and exciting career of Yayoi Kusama who has manifested her obsession with hypnotizing repetitive dot patterns in an ongoing series of Infinity Nets. The project has spanned almost the duration of her formidable career, which has taken many turns around the theme of Kusama’s private psychological challenges. Kusama’s work is not created with the intent of challenging conventions—rather she has invented her own visual language to convey the complexities of her own mind. Yayoi Kusama has been honored as one of the world’s preeminent avantgarde artists for nearly half a century. Her entire being is devoted to her unique aesthetic, a cathartic expression of her personal history. Born in Japan, Kusama recalls a traumatic wartime childhood that, from a young age, she escaped through hallucinations. Her art brought her to America in the 1950s, where she began covering surfaces with obsessively repetitive painted circles—her astonishing Infinity Net paintings. Whether physically positioning herself in polka-dotted rooms with camouflaged objects, or vigorously painting flat surfaces, Kusama conveys a sense of endless spaces locked in a particular moment. The world she shares is the world she escapes to, trance-like and whimsical. Like Kusama herself, the present lot is a thoughtful and self-affirming product of methodical reflection and dedicated focus. Kusama was trained in Nihonga painting, a rigorous style developed during the Meiji period (1868-1912) that combines traditional Japanese techniques and materials with 19th-century European representative subject matter. By the 1950s she began to experiment with more abstracted natural forms, resulting in her transcendent organic patterns. The present lot is an awe-inspiring impasto expanse of white, labor-intensive loops. At once meditative and agitated, the work is wholly symbolic of Kusama’s complicated being. Read More Artist Bio Yayoi Kusama Japanese • 1929 Named "the world's most popular artist" in 2015, it's not hard to see why Yayoi Kusama continues to dazzle contemporary art audiences globally. From her signature polka dots—"fabulous," she calls them—to her mirror-and-light Infinity Rooms, Kusama's multi-dimensional practice of making art elevates the experience of immersion. To neatly pin an artistic movement onto Kusama would be for naught: She melds and transcends the aesthetics and theories of many late twentieth century movements, including Pop Art and Minimalism, without ever taking a singular path. As an octogenarian who still lives—somewhat famously—in a psychiatric institution in Tokyo and steadfastly paints in her immaculate studio every day, Kusama honed her punchy cosmic style in New York City in the 1960s. During this period, she staged avant-garde happenings, which eventually thrust her onto the international stage with a series of groundbreaking exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1980s and the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993. She continues to churn out paintings and installations at inspiring speed, exhibiting internationally in nearly every corner of the globe, and maintains a commanding presence on the primary market and at auction. View More Works