040616 – Infinity – Victoria Miro, London N1

The concept of infinity sits uncomfortably in a scientific world that relies so intrinsically on its units of measure. Infinity is an abstract, a mathematical or philosophical concept. Scientifically the idea of an infinite continuum does not exist, as all that is real requires a resource that is ultimately finite. Reality is a resource that can be measured and quantified.

Infinity has been an obsession of Yayoi Kusama from her early works such as the ‘Infinity Net’ paintings of 1961 or the ‘Endless Love Room’ of 1965. This obsession continues in the recent installations at the Victoria Miro Gallery that pursue the concepts of a finite space enclosed by the boundless perimeter. The spaces created are solitary, peaceful, meditive, cosmological, ethereal, like the endless spaces created by Superstudio or the infinite white space of Space 2001. These spaces are deeply rooted in the culture of 1960s philosophical ideology and have an idealised physical and conceptual beauty.

The Koch Snowflake is a mathematical curve and one of the earliest constructs of fractal geometry. Its area converges and is therefor finite while its boundary diverges and is therefore infinite. A fixed area bounded by an infinite border or enclosure, a very Yayoi spatial conflict.

Lucy, from the film Lucy and the only person known to have accessed 100% of her cerebral cortex explains the paradox simply – “Humans consider themselves unique so they invented their theories of existence based on this belief of uniqueness. One is their unit of measure, it is the means by which we quantify all systems but our units of measure have been conceived to make the world comprehensible. We have quantified all systems to bring them down to a human scale, to make them comprehensible we have created a scale so that we can forget its unfathomable scale.” 

Infinity is a circular system.       

The Surrogate Twin