“The endless Infinity Nets seem to contain an inexplicable magic power that produces a mesmerizing illusory effect as people stare at the nets and have no idea where the patterns lead to.” Beatrice Perry, the renowned art dealer in New York gave the compliment when she saw Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Nets for the first time.
Yayoi Kusama’s nets are like an enigmatic riddle, from which we can simultaneously find masculinity and femininity, courage and vulnerability, rationality and intuition, and more importantly, the mutual complementarity between these bipolar elements. This kind of interaction comes from the subconscious space between the two planes of each net: the first plane is the perpendicular image itself, while the second one is the rippling plane composed of thickly painted circles in the net. These two planes intersect endlessly to produce a wavering image that shifts toward and away from viewers in a beautiful rhythm, rising up and falling back down. Yayoi Kusama described the pen strokes as “monotonous repetitions analogous to a mechanical device.” As Yayoi Kusama recalled, she invested a lot of effort into creating the same composition in intention to fight against lyrical expressions of abstract expressionism. This piece of acrylic painting “Nets 19” was created in 1998 with the concept of replicating dichromatic spotted patterns. The artwork is composed of simple and complex aesthetics. The pen strokes appear monotonous and dull like an operating machine, yet they also display the dual temperament of being unpredictable as in a sudden inspiration. The image is composed of black and yellow, which originated from the artist’s personal illusions. At the same time, these two colors also produce the visual effect of “infinity” on the canvas. You cannot find a starting point in this piece of “Nets 19,” just like you do not know where it ultimately leads to.