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Lot Essay
Kusama is known for her Infinity Net and the polka dot, two interchangeable motifs that she adopted as her alter ego, her logo, her franchise and her weapon of incursion into the world at large.
Flowers (Lot 101), The Death of Youth (Lot 166) have a profoundly autobiographical, surreal and psychedelic quality linked to the artist's earliest childhood experience. They are recreations of her overwhelming visual hallucinations as a child that provides a glimpse into her eccentric and profound world vision. Flowers would remain a staple motif throughout her career that connotes life and death, celebration and mourning, masculinity and femininity, with their complex forms that are fragile and organic. In The Death of Youth, like her first encounter with hallucinations, the butterfly, floating dots and net patterns, surrounded and threatened to obliterate her physical and emotional sense of self.
"One day, looking at a red flower-pattered table cloth on the table, I turned my eyes to the ceiling and saw the same flower pattern everywhere, even on the window glass and posts. The room, my body, the entire universe was filled with it, my self was eliminated, and I had returned and been reduced to the infinity of eternal time and the absolute space. This was not an illusion but reality."
The Pumpkin (Lot 102) and Hitomi (Lot 170) painted in acrylic on canvas is festooned with myriad shimmering dots and crystallizations. The rich visual optical effect is achieved through Kusama's reverential attention to detail, each object precisely painted with tiny dots, juxtaposed against psychedelic colours. In Pumpkin, Kusama uses vibrant fluorescent contrasting colors to portray her subjects which are offset by sharp black background with cobalt blue nets creating a near hallucinatory quality. The results of both works are light and playful yet mesmerizing in its rhythmic pattern.
Flowers (Lot 101), The Death of Youth (Lot 166) have a profoundly autobiographical, surreal and psychedelic quality linked to the artist's earliest childhood experience. They are recreations of her overwhelming visual hallucinations as a child that provides a glimpse into her eccentric and profound world vision. Flowers would remain a staple motif throughout her career that connotes life and death, celebration and mourning, masculinity and femininity, with their complex forms that are fragile and organic. In The Death of Youth, like her first encounter with hallucinations, the butterfly, floating dots and net patterns, surrounded and threatened to obliterate her physical and emotional sense of self.
"One day, looking at a red flower-pattered table cloth on the table, I turned my eyes to the ceiling and saw the same flower pattern everywhere, even on the window glass and posts. The room, my body, the entire universe was filled with it, my self was eliminated, and I had returned and been reduced to the infinity of eternal time and the absolute space. This was not an illusion but reality."
The Pumpkin (Lot 102) and Hitomi (Lot 170) painted in acrylic on canvas is festooned with myriad shimmering dots and crystallizations. The rich visual optical effect is achieved through Kusama's reverential attention to detail, each object precisely painted with tiny dots, juxtaposed against psychedelic colours. In Pumpkin, Kusama uses vibrant fluorescent contrasting colors to portray her subjects which are offset by sharp black background with cobalt blue nets creating a near hallucinatory quality. The results of both works are light and playful yet mesmerizing in its rhythmic pattern.