YAYOI KUSAMA
WHITE INIFINITY NET
Victoria Miro Mayfair
14 St George Street - London
1/10/2013 - 9/11/2013
Victoria Miro is delighted to inaugurate its new Mayfair gallery with a
presentation of recent white Infinity Net paintings by Yayoi Kusama. It is the
first time Kusama has exclusively shown white Infinity Nets in Europe and in its
select concentration on these iconic works the exhibition recalls Kusama's debut
solo show in New York at the Brata Gallery in October 1959.
From a distance
these delicate paintings read as monochromes, but up close their intricate
surfaces become visible: small arched semi-circles of white paint almost
completely covering the ground of the canvases. On each painting the underlay, a
wash of black or grey, is obscured by an intricate network of gestural scallops
of paint that combine to form a net. The paintings are characterised by an
all-over surface that suggests detailed lattice- or lacework. The nets appear to
extend beyond the picture planes, suggesting the potential to expand
indefinitely.
The first Infinity Nets Kusama produced in the 1950s and 60s
were white although she subsequently also made coloured net paintings. Since
these first iterations she has returned periodically to Infinity Nets, and these
works have become a touchstone in her practice for over half a century. Her
repeated revisiting and expansion of this significant body of work highlights
its continued importance to the artist. Her adoption of the title Infinity Net
for her autobiography also reflects their standing throughout her career. In her
autobiography, which is published in paperback by Tate Publishing this
September, Kusama describes her first exhibition:
"I debuted in New York
with just five works - monochromatic and simple, yet complex, subconscious
accumulations of microcosmic lights, in which the spatial universe unfolds as
far as the eye can see. Yet at first glance the canvases, which were up to 14ft
in length, looked like nothing at all - just plain white surfaces".
The
paintings immediately gained critical recognition and were instrumental in
making the artist's name in New York in the 1960s. Donald Judd, one of Kusama's
earliest and closest friends in New York, was the first collector of white
Infinity Net paintings and brilliantly championed the work in his review of the
exhibitionThe paintings openly display the process of their construction, making
evident the obsessive diligence with which they were made. From their earliest
iterations, the white Infinity Nets have been produced in intense, protracted
bursts of energy. In her early experiments with the form in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, Kusama compulsively painted nets for hours on end without eating or
sleeping. Even today when working on new Infinity Net paintings her focus is
single-minded and relentless.
This is in part because the paintings have
such an important position in Kusama's history and personal mythology. The
artist has described her Infinity Net paintings as visualisations of
hallucinations that have recurred since her childhood. During these episodes her
visual field is obscured by an overlay of nets or dots that appear to cover her
surroundings. These hallucinations are just one manifestation of psychological
ill health that has plagued the artist for most of her life. She describes her
primary symptom as a sense of depersonalisation, of feeling removed from
reality. The nets in her paintings can be read as obscuring screens that allow
only a partial view of what lies behind or beyond. The ground beneath the nets
is visible only as specks, or, more accurately in Kusama's terms, dots.
Kusama's White Infinity Net paintings are recognized as some of the most
compelling works of her extraordinary oeuvre. The artist has always worked
serially, but her periodic return to the white Infinity Nets is something else:
it is as if from time to time she is compelled to re-immerse herself in this
body of work, representing as it does the purest expression of her artistic
manifesto. This exhibition both in its scale and focussed presentation will
completely surround the viewer with white Infinity Nets in an echo of some of
her earliest solo shows in America from the 50s and 60s.
One of the most
revered artists of her generation, Kusama is known for a rich and diverse
artistic oeuvre, which includes painting, sculpture, printmaking, installation,
film and performance. Although her practice resists singular characterisation
the Infinity Nets have strong associations with several major post-war artistic
movements. In the United States, Infinity Net paintings have been contextualised
with Minimal and Op painting. Their gestural surfaces also ally them with the
work of artists affiliated with Post-Minimalism. In Europe, early Infinity Nets
were shown alongside, and discussed in relation to, work by artists in the Zero
and Nul movements. Despite their historical resonances, however, the Infinity
Nets are not historical artefacts. As this new group of work demonstrates, the
paintings remain contemporary and relevant, continuing to engage and enthral
viewers in the artist's ninth decade.
