Tatsuo Miyajima achieved international recognition for his works incorporating flashing light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Since the Japanese artist began working with LEDs in 1987, he has developed a distinctive body of work that is now synonymous with the artist.
 
Initially, he only used red and green LEDs to create reliefs and sculptures. A few years later, more advanced technology allowed him to expand his color spectrum to include blue and white, and today offers him a wealth of color possibilities.
 
Miyajima, however, does not rely solely on the engaging effect of the light-emitting diodes, which flash from 1 to 9 or from 9 to 1. Instead, he employs a variety of systems for visualizing the digits. The counting follows either a rhythm set by the artist or a randomly changing speed. Created are choreographies of an unpredictable visual array of emerging clusters and movements.
 
This can range from the use of a few LEDs to monumental works comprising 2400 LEDs such as Mega Death, a large-scale installation of blue LEDs that Tatsuo Miyajima installed for the first time in the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2001.
 
The counting of the diodes, which suggests a kind of movement in time and space, is not a purely technical, technicist matter for the artist, who was born in Tokyo in 1957. Quite the opposite: Miyajima imbues his diode clusters with meaning by forging a conceptual link between modern technology and Far Eastern Buddhist philosophy.
 
For him, the repeating series of numbers symbolize the cycle of life—the intertwining of individual and collective existence. “One constant in life is the fact that we are always changing,” says Miyajima. Therefore, the number 0 has no place in his work, since it symbolizes finality. “We humans are under the illusion that we can do anything, and we try to manipulate nature to our liking,” says Miyajima. “But nature and the universe behave in unpredictable ways.”
 
This unpredictable, permanent change, this uncertainty about what may come next, is reflected not only in his impressive works, but also in his artistic parameters: “Keep changing / Connect with everything / Continue forever!”
 
By fusing technology and spirituality, Tatsuo Miyajima’s work invites viewers to contemplate the transience of life and offers a vision of continuity that transcends the boundaries of time, space, and individuality.
 
Important works by the artist are represented in the collections of the Tate Gallery London, La Caixa Barcelona, the Deste Foundation Athens, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the Leeum Seoul, and—arranged through the Buchmann Galerie—the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung Munich, and the M+ in Hong Kong.
 
Further insights into the artist’s work are offered in the publication Tatsuo Miyajima—Connect with Everything, published on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2017.