Keep Changing
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Photo by Nobutada Omote
Tatsuo Miyajima is a conceptual artist who is internationally renowned for his sculptural installations incorporating digital counters and based on three key concepts: “Keep Changing,” “Connect with Everything” and “Continue Forever.”
Shown at the “Keep Changing” and “Object of Change” exhibitions at Akio Nagasawa Gallery Ginza, “Painting of Change” is a series of 10 works that encourage the viewer’s active response, and that literally keep changing according to their interaction. Visitors roll a ten-faced dice, and alter the configuration of one of the works (consisting of seven bars shaped like the components of a digital number display) according to the result – a number between 0 and 9. As there is always one in this series that is transformed through such individual interference, the exhibition at large changes by the hour, making every visit a unique, one-time-only experience.
As a lesser known fact, Miyajima started his artistic career by staging performances. Such elements of performance are rather prominent in the works featured here, which is not entirely unrelated to the artistic concept of “Art in You” that Miyajima has been advocating in recent years. According to his idea, a piece of art is not something that exists and works independently, but it is only through the viewer’s artistic sensitivity that an artwork’s meaning and function are discovered and activated.
Miyajima’s works can be interpreted as devices that facilitate a direct dialogue between the viewer and the respective exhibit, and that stimulate the inherent artistic sensitivity of those who look at them.
The exhibition “Continue Forever” is also concurrently shown at Akio Nagasawa Gallery Aoyama. The centerpiece here is a set of new drawings revolving around Miyajima’s own hand-written numbers, transformed into a digital font.
The items on display at these two exhibitions can be understood as indicating a new frontier in Miyajima’s work, and in this sense, they are certainly opportunities that are not to be missed.
Akio Nagasawa Gallery (Ginza) - Advanced Booking Required
During the exhibition, from 3:00pm, only one visitor per day will be allowed to participate in the “Painting of Change” installation. Visitor will be asked to throw a dice and the shape of the artwork will be changed according to the number rolled.
To make your reservation send an email to info@akionagasawa.com with the following subject: “Tatsuo Miyajima Exhibition - Reservation request” and in the email body, please indicate your preference of date and day of the week (Tuesday through Friday).
Participations will be available on the first come, first-served basis.
Artist
Tatsuo MIYAJIMA
宮島達男
Born in Tokyo in 1957. Completed postgraduate studies at Tokyo University of the Arts in 1986. Since his debut in Aperto ’88 at the Venice Biennale, he has been recognized as one of Japan’s foremost contemporary artists and has exhibited widely in Japan and internationally.
He represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and has held major solo exhibitions at leading institutions including Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (1990), Hayward Gallery, London (1997), Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2000), Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2002), Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (2004), Art Tower Mito (2008), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2016). His works are held in the collections of Tate, London; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; among others. He has also realized large-scale public art commissions such as for TV Asahi at Roppongi Hills, Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Tokyo Opera City, and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul.
Miyajima is best known for his LED counter works, based on three key concepts: Keep Changing, Connect with Everything, Continue Forever. The counters, each blinking at different speeds and never displaying zero, evoke the continuity, eternity, and interconnectedness of time and human life.
He is the founder of the Revive Time: Kaki Tree Project, which propagates seedlings from a persimmon tree that survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and plants them worldwide. More recently, he has been engaged in the Sea of Time – TOHOKU project, which seeks to carry forward the memories of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake while envisioning a new future for the Tohoku region.
Miyajima’s solo exhibition is currently on view at the Asia University Museum of Modern Art, Taichung, Taiwan, through July 2026.
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