Yayoi Kusama // Nets 24, 1997

  • Yayoi Kusama, Nets 24, 1997. Acrylic on canvas, 45.7 × 53 cm. A late Infinity Net painting reflecting Kusama’s obsession with repetition, accumulation, and infinity.
    Nets 24, 1997
    Acrylic on canvas, 45.7 × 53 cm (18 × 20 7/8 in.)
    © Yayoi Kusama. Image reproduced for educational and informational purposes only. 
     
    Painted in 1997, Nets 24 reflects Kusama’s lifelong return to the Infinity Net, one of her most enduring and career-defining motifs. First conceived in New York in the late 1950s, these all-over fields of rhythmic mark-making established her as a pioneering figure in postwar abstraction. By the 1990s, Kusama had re-engaged with the series, producing canvases that carried the obsessive intensity of her early practice but with the maturity and assurance of an internationally celebrated artist.
     
    In Nets 24, the repeated arcs and mesh-like patterns dissolve the boundary between foreground and background, creating a sense of endless expansion. The painting is at once intimate in scale and cosmic in implication, demonstrating how Kusama could transform a simple gesture into a meditation on infinity, self-dissolution, and continuity.

  • “My nets grew ... They began to cover the walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe.” 

    – Yayoi Kusama

    This work highlights the remarkable consistency of Kusama’s visual language, showing how the Infinity Net evolved across decades while remaining central to her exploration of obsession, repetition, and psychological depth. By the late 1990s, the series had become not only a hallmark of her practice but also a universal symbol of boundlessness that resonated with audiences worldwide.