In Mire G 66 (Kowloon) (1983), Dubuffet stages a field of dynamic lines in blue and red that pulse, loop and twist against the yellow ground. The work belongs to Dubuffet’s Mires (which he also referred to as “Test Patterns”), a late series made between February 1983 and February 1984 in which he pursued the near-total erasure of the figure and pushed his earlier Sites and Psycho-sites towards the abstract idiom. First presented in the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1984, the Mires marked a decisive late-career turn: a renewed attempt to see the flux of accelerating daily life.

“Kowloon” in the title refers to the dense urban district in Hong Kong – long associated with extreme density and labyrinth-like space. In effect, the surface of the work becomes a metaphor for perceptual saturation, a surface where marks collide, overlap, and refuse hierarchy. The title aligns with Dubuffet’s aim in the Mires series to overwhelm habitual seeing and to mimic the experience of navigating an unstructured, teeming environment, rather than representing any specific site.

Comparable works from this series can be found in important museum collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris and Fondation Dubuffet, Paris.