For the first time in the UK, Japanese installation artist and sculptor Tatsuo Miyajima presents three new works – Painting of change, Keep changing (Mondrian) and Unstable Time – all to be created in 2020 and 2021 at his studio in Japan. Known for their profoundly spiritual works exploring Buddhist philosophy through technical installations, these new works include large single-digit works activated by the roll of a dice, executed for the first time; new LED gadgets mounted on fabric; and panel-mounted LED installations that suggest the cycle of life through ever-changing digital displays.
Numbers are a unique form of artistic expression for Miyajima, an international language that crosses cultural boundaries. They symbolise the human life cycle, with each number representing a body and soul respectively. The first room of the exhibition is dedicated to a series of changing paintings, where oil paint on canvas or gold leaf on wood panel is used to depict a large unit number that moves between 9 and 1. The number displayed is determined by the polyhedral dice displayed with the work, which are activated throughout the duration of the exhibition. This interaction through the use of dice – an object known for playing with chance – illustrates Miyajima’s fundamental belief in the ever-changing nature of life and the way in which all things, all atoms, are interconnected. For Buddhists, nothing is constant or fixed, but ever-changing, an eternal change, rebirth or reincarnation – the cycle of all existence. The introduction of the dice also involves a paradox between the certainty of objects, undermined by a fate governed by the indeterminacy of the dice.
The final room of the exhibition sees a collection of works entitled ‘Keep changing (Mondrian)’, with panels of LED installations arranged in a grid pattern. In each piece, miniature LED diodes count backwards from 9 to 1, using Miyajima’s signature pattern, always omitting the ‘0’ – replacing it with a brief dark gap representing the space between life and death – and then starting again, the cycle repeating itself. -and then the cycle begins again. In the keep changing (Mondrian) works, colour is also reborn after each life cycle, with the sequence continuing again at nine, but with new colours, each with its own distinctive character. These colours – green, blue, red, yellow and white – symbolise earth, water, fire, wind and sky, the ‘five elements’. There are multiple LEDs on the panel, each running naturally through its life cycle at different speeds, so visitors will observe this dynamic flow of colour changes at seemingly random but metaphorical intervals.