Numbers add up at artist鈥檚 museum launch
Print Edition
Tatsuo Miyajima, one of Japan鈥檚 foremost sculptors and installation artists, is an ideal choice to launch the relocated Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum.
The museum鈥檚 new venue, at Wenshui Road, has been renovated from an old and abandoned metallurgical factory and occupies an area of 7,000 square-meters.
Miyajima is the perfect artist to promote the new location as industrial remains echo well within his artworks.
Titled 鈥淭atsuo Miyajima: Being Coming,鈥 the solo-exhibition features representative works from the 61-year-old since 1988, including his LED installation and performance art.
When entering the exhibition hall, visitors are immediately taken by a cluster of colorful LED numbers hanging from the ceiling or 鈥減opping out鈥 from the screens.
Numbers always play a part in his works. For example, 鈥淭ime Waterfall Panel #MAM,鈥 stands out like a monument, projecting natural numbers from one to nine on the LED pillar, decreasing from big numbers to small numbers, but never reaching zero.
The artist鈥檚 continuous process of counting down symbolizes a life experience, along with the vanished light that hints the number of zero is a metaphor of death. Every digit appears in a different size at a different speed, which generates overlapping layers and each layer implies a distinctive trajectory of each individual鈥檚 life.
Born in 1957 in Tokyo, Miyajima finished his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1986. After his studies he began experimenting with performance art before moving on to light-based installations.
鈥淭ime connects everything, and I want people to think about the universe and the human spirit,鈥 the artist said. 鈥淔or me, there is no particular meaning about these numbers. Numbers are a universal symbol. Changes in numbers vividly reveal a changing or fading process.鈥
鈥淜eep changing,鈥 鈥渃onnect with all鈥 and 鈥済oes on forever鈥 are three of the Japanese artist鈥檚 core concepts.
The bigger the themes, the harder the creations. But Miyajima swiftly finds his way through the use of digital light emitting diode (LED) counters, or 鈥済adgets鈥 as he calls them, and has done since the late 1980s.
These numbers, continually flashing and repetitious 鈥 though not necessarily sequential 鈥 cycles from one to nine, represent the journey from life to death, the finality of which is symbolized by 鈥0,鈥 which consequently never appears in his work. This theory derives partially from humanist ideas, the teachings of Buddhism, as well as from his core artistic concepts.
His LED numerals have been presented in grids, towers, complex integrated groupings or circuits and as simple digital counters, but are all aligned with his interests in continuity, connections and eternity, as well as with the flow and span of time and space.
The spotlight of the exhibition is his installation 鈥淭ime Train to the Holocaust/Counter Coal.鈥 It is actually two works, yet they are a harmonious match.
鈥淐ounter Coal鈥 is a pile of coal in the exhibition hall, and the digital LEDS are constantly flashing among the coal blocks.
Then there is a toy train track around the pile of coal, with a train moving around it, also with LED numerals flashing in some of the compartments.
Miyajima summed up the 20th century as a period of human history that was more violent than any before. Here the moving train is reminiscent of those that were transporting thousands of Jewish people to their fatal destination in the concentration camps of World War II.
鈥淭he brutal killing of the Jewish people by the Nazis is already a past history, and I hope that such crimes will never reappear or be repeated,鈥 Miyajima explained.
Aside from his thought-provoking installations, Miyajima is also noted as a performance artist.
For example, 鈥淐ounter Voice in the water at Fukushima鈥 (2014), sees a video record Miyajima counting down from nine to one. When he reaches 鈥0,鈥 he inhales and holds his breath, and puts his face in the water from the sea. In front of the sea is the nuclear power plant, which was severely damaged by the Tsunami that struck Fukushima, Japan in 2011.
When confronting another work titled 鈥淎rchives of Deathclock,鈥 visitors are directly forced with the theme of death.
The work creates a place where one can confront one鈥檚 own death. People who register with 鈥淒eathclock鈥 are asked to type in their own date of death. But this death is a different version of death 鈥 it is like the aforementioned welling up of an intuition that makes them sense the next life ahead.
Viewing a group of pictures capturing various people with their Deathclock, visitors might think of their own demise. Here the artist emphasizes 鈥渢hose who can teach how to die can also teach how to live.鈥
鈥淭atsuo Miyajima: Being Coming鈥
Date: 10am鈥6pm, through August 18
Address: 210 Wenshui Rd
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