Petals are Soaring into the Air (2012) by Yayoi Kusama is among the most technically complex works in her printed output — produced as a printer's proof from an edition of five, combining etching, silkscreen and embossing on a single sheet, the layered processes giving the image a physical presence that flat screenprint cannot achieve. The image is built from repeated biomorphic units — forms that read at once as petals, leaves, and something closer to marine organisms, each one a curved spine with lateral branches terminating in small bulbous marks. They are distributed across a deep blue ground in overlapping clusters, no single unit more prominent than another, the arrangement suggesting dispersal rather than image — forms caught mid-movement, scattered across the surface as the title implies.

Pink and black sit against the blue in sharp contrast, the warm tones of the forms advancing against the cool ground, the black outlines and marks holding each unit in definition against the surrounding colour. The embossing introduces a further dimension — raised areas that catch light differently across the sheet, the image shifting subtly depending on the angle of view in a way that printed colour alone cannot produce. By 2012 Kusama was in her early eighties and had been working within a consistent set of concerns for over fifty years — repetition, accumulation, the continuous field, the organic unit repeated until it transcends its own identity. Petals are Soaring into the Air belongs to a late body of work in which those concerns are expressed through increasingly complex technical means, the printer's proof status of this impression making it among the rarest works from the edition.

For more information or to buy Petals are Soaring into the Air by Yayoi Kusama, contact our specialists using the enquiry button above.