My nets grew beyond myself and beyond the canvases I was covering with them…They began to cover the walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe. I was always standing at the center of the obsession, over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me. -Yayoi Kusama (in Udo Kultermann, Yayoi Kusama, New York 2000, p. 103)

Yayoi Kusama’s stunningly complex Infinity Net paintings are her most celebrated series. The iconic works are characterized by intricate surfaces of small painted arches covering the ground of the canvas, like the details lattice or lace. Infinity Nets underlay is a wash of bright reds, oranges and yellows, obscured by the gestural net form. The black nets stretch across the surface of the painting and extend beyond the picture plane into infinity. Kusama’s first net paintings were produced in the 1950s and 1960s, and are inspired by her own recurring hallucinatory visions where her entire visual field is obscured by nets and dots. The net composition produces biomorphic shapes that come in and out of focus, suggesting cosmos, cells or atoms, enveloping the viewer, just as they envelope Kusama.