Tatsuo Miyajima
August 9th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing recently opened an exhibition of Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima. I have long been a fan of Miyajima’s work and installations. While the artist confines himself to working exclusively with small LED number panels, he has been able to display them in vastly different and beautiful ways.
The LEDs hold universal meanings to the artist and his work, but are also used to touch on larger subjects with each installation. The artist only uses 1 through 9, and 9 through 1, because of the powerful void that 0 represents. There are Zen Buddhist undertones to the work, as numbers come into and leave existence, turning on and off, working alone and together. Sometimes they work in sync and sometimes together. Sometimes they are installed on walls or columns, and sometimes they drift down rivers, or ride the backs of small robots. In all of these situations, the numbers are representing as much as they are acting, as a symbol of the cycle of life, and as totems for our personal experiences in Life.
UCCA’s show is titled “Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust”, which adroitly continues this theme. It contains three large works. MEGA DEATH presents us with a room filled with blue LEDs that twink on and off, representing the estimated number of victims of the 20th Century’s wars, violet struggles and pogroms. The number (which is 167,000,000) transforms from abstract calculation to human loss when all 2,400 LEDs go blank at once, leaving the viewers standing in the dark, standing in Zero. HOTO is a colorful tower that houses the LEDs in a reflective material. The individuality and colors of the numbers is met with the viewer’s own reflection, and the distorted reflections of other viewers, adding a dazzling worldliness to each viewers sense of self. Floating Time displays numbers floating and flying through (what appear to be) LCD screens set in Simon Says colors. Here again ideas of transience and collective anonymity entice the viewer into quiet and sublime meditation.
The exhibition is open through October 8th.
—
All artworks are copyright Tatsuo Miyajima. All images were borrowed from the UCCA website. The artist’s personal website can be found here.
