Tatsuo Miyajima
Japanese, 1957-

Life (Ku-Wall) No. 1, 2014
light emitting diode, IC, microcomputer by Ikegami program, electric wire, passive sensor, smoke glass, stainless steel
47 1/4 x 94 1/2 x 7 7/8 in.

© Tatsuo Miyajima; Courtesy Lisson Gallery. Photography by Jack Hems.

COMMENTS

Tatsuo Miyajima’s first solo exhibition in Milan revolves around a new body of work that continues his pioneering use of technology in sculptural assemblage and interactive installations. The show is titled KU, a term that signifies ‘empty’ in Japanese, but which also stands in for the numerical starting point, zero, which has always represented a null state or death for the artist and has consequently not featured in his life-affirming work. For the first time in his career-long exploration of numerology and symbolism, Miyajima is questioning whether there is anything more to this nothingness, taking his cue from the Buddhist tenet that describes death as a period of rest or preparation for the next life.

A large wall-hung work – containing a myriad of Miyajima’s familiar LED number counters, scrolling from 1 to 9 – briefly lights up the space after each blink or flash of a new digit. Suddenly and without warning, the lights all extinguish simultaneously, as if the ‘gadget’ (as Miyajima refers to his self-contained counting systems) had been abruptly switched off or unplugged. This shut-down, representing the idea of death or perhaps the aforementioned preparatory ‘sleep’, comes unexpectedly and seemingly randomly, and is only reversed when a viewer in the gallery nears the object, entitled Life (Ku-Wall), to bring it back to life once more. Miyajima has recently engaged in research as to the possibilities of creating artificial, non-organic life through technological means, in association with Professor Takashi Ikegami of Tokyo University, who developed a new processor to drive the speeds and programming of the individual counting units.

https://www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/ku