Tonight is the UK premiere of a new work by international artist-composer Ryoji Ikeda, marking a year of site-specific installations at Brewer Street Car Park in Soho. supersymmetry is Ikeda’s first large-scale solo exhibition in London since spectra dramatically illuminated the capital’s night sky last August for the 1418 commemorations. Drawing on Ikeda’s residency at CERN, the world’s largest particle physics research institute, supersymmetry explores the aesthetics of quantum information theory and particle physics. In the first of two pitch black spaces in Brewer Street Car Park, tiny ballbearings move in complex, seemingly random ways across inclined light boxes emitting intense white light. The movements are simultaneously translated into rapidly changing, blinking data on two 20m long screens and forty monitors in the next space. An immersive disorientating collision of mutating, sound, text and visual data, the work is a close interrogation at the intersection of music and visual art through mathematics, quantum mechanics and logic.
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, orchestrating sound, visual materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations. He also works on long-term projects that manifest as live performances, installations, books and CDs such as datamatics (2006-), test pattern (2008-), spectra (2001-), cyclo with Carsten Nicolai, and superposition (2012-).
Ikeda performs and exhibits including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; Singapore Art Museum; Ars Electronica Center, Linz; Elektra Festival, Montreal; Grec and Sonar Festivals, Barcelona; Aichi Triennale, Nagoya; Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Park Avenue Armory, New York; Barbican Centre, London; Museo de Arte, Bogota; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; DHC/Art Montreal, Festival d’Automne Paris, Sharjah Biennale; MONA Museum Hobart – Tasmania, Ruhrtriennale, Telefonica Foundation Madrid, and MoMA, New York. He was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica for Collide@CERN 2014. www.ryojiikeda.com and supersymmetry.ycam.jp/en/
Ryoji Ikeda, Supersymmetry, 23rd April to 31st May 2015, Brewer Street Car Park, Top Floor, Brewer Street, London W1F 0LA. Free admission. Open Tuesday – Sunday, 12:00pm – 6:00pm (closed Mondays). www.brewerstreetcarpark.com
