Fondation

DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art is delighted to present Ryoji Ikeda’s first survey exhibition in North America.

A fascinating and troubling poet of the digital age, Ikeda’s profound investigations in sound, time and space have their basis in mathematical methods which result in works of spare, sublime, if occasionally ear-splitting beauty. Spanning the microscopic to the infinite, his performances, installations and artworks variously produce sine waves, sound pulses, pixels of light and numerical data – sometimes in extraordinary combinations.

The artist has conceived a conceptual counterpoint between DHC/ART’s two buildings: the main space will display framed works, light boxes, sculptural works and works on paper under the rubric systematics. In the Satellite space Ikeda will present audiovisual projects, orchestrated as a symphonic whole, from the datamatics series which tests the limits of perception by visualizing the invisible data streams which permeate our world.

Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist, Ryoji Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.

Alongside pure musical activities, Ikeda has been working on long-term installation projects: datamatics (2006-) consisting of moving image, sculptural, sound and new media works that explore how abstracted views of reality are used to encode, understand and control the world. The project test pattern (2008-) has developed a system that converts any type of data – text, sounds, photos and movies – into barcode patterns and binary patterns of 0s and 1s. The series spectra (2001-) consists of large-scale installations employing intense white light as a sculptural material transforming public locations in Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona and Nagoya.

Elements of this installation were provided by Park Avenue Armory.

With the cooperation of Gallery Koyanagi. The exhibition of Ryoji Ikeda is supported by the Japan Foundation. This exhibition is presented within the first International Digital Arts Biennal (BIAN 2012).