Drawing from her childhood experiences, Yayoi Kusama's works are at once profoundly autobiographical and provocative. The obsessively repeated polka dots on her sculptures and installations are recreations of her overwhelming visual hallucinations as a child, and provide a glimpse into her eccentric and profound world vision.

Her choice of pumpkins as motifs - this solid, hearty vegetable of the earth - is compellingly paired with her signature black dots, which in themselves already mimic the round, spotty surface texture of the vegetable. The present lot, Pumpkin (Lot 2409), carries a certificate signed by the artist and issued from Yayoi Kusama Studio. In this large-scale sculpture, we find a distilled, combined use of the aesthetic tools and concept from her Infinity Nets series and the popular motif of the pumpkins. Using black dots to offset the sharp yellow background, Kusama creates a rich visual sensation in this slightly off-kilter shape of a gleaming varnished surface. The result is a work that is light and playful yet mesmerizing in its rhythmic pattern. In it we find a liberating outlet for Kusama's psychological hardship as she generously shares her world with us.