Galería Javier López is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Spain by Japanese artist, TATSUO MIYAJIMA (1957).
Tatsuo Miyajima completed his post-graduate studies in 1986 at the Tokyo National University. He first attracted attention in 1988 when his work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale, in the Aperto section. He would again participate in 1999 in this contemporary art exhibition representing his country with ‘Mega Death,’ displayed in the Japanese Pavilion the installation exemplifies his already well-known digital counters devised from LEDs.
Through his focus on the subjects of time and space, Miyajima follows a Japanese tradition. His exciting technologies operate on the tension between the modern and the past. The artist considers our perception of time to be essential to the basic definition of human spirituality. His work from the 80s made out of materials often already used (old televisions, transistors, etc.) creates virtual electronic nervous systems that combine sound, image and movement. This works enabled the artist to develop the principles that still today guide his work: continuous change, endless change, and a connection with everything. “Infinity, like time itself, keeps changing.” By the end of 1987, Miyajima produced his first digital counter (that displayed numbers progressively from one to nine, then back again), a generic element that in the artist’s eyes symbolizes the most basic visualization of the passing of time; a notion that ever since then impregnates his work in the form of combinations that explore the infinite symbolic relations of the numeric.
Miyajima, who began to study Buddhist philosophy at the age of 23, sees Buddhism as a religion about time. His numerical images symbolize in their unceasing change the extensive challenge of visualizing the vast complexity of the universe; defiance defined as much by Buddhist philosophy as by modern Physics. In this universe the individual represents nothing more than a tiny, but significant unit within a vast and incomprehensible whole. But above all, Miyajima is, like any other artist, an inventor that uses images that offer his particular vision of reality.
