RYOJI IKEDA - 180 STUDIOS

The Vinyl Factory and Fact are presenting a new RYOJI IKEDA exhibition at 180 Studios – in collaboration with Audemars Piguet Contemporary, opening May 2021. Featuring the largest collection of the artist’s work in Europe to date, as well as world premieres of never-before-seen works, RYOJI IKEDA invites viewers to immerse themselves in Ikeda’s thought-provoking and highly-charged dynamic digital universe. Imagined by Ryoji Ikeda as a subterranean exploration of sound and light, the exhibition will take viewers on a sensory journey of 180 Studios’ labyrinth-like spaces, which seem to defy the building’s scale. Among those artworks premiering is the data-verse trilogy – a large-scale immersive project commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary in 2015. The installation will feature all three variations, shown for the first time together at 180 Studios, creating a rare opportunity for audiences to see the works in harmony in a new environment that is uniquely able to take on and maximise the trilogy’s scale. A new, site-specific version of test pattern will also be making its global debut. test pattern is a system that converts any type of data (text, sounds, photos and movies) into barcode patterns and binary patterns of 0s and 1s. Through its application, the project aims to examine the relationship between critical points of device performance and the threshold of human perception. The exhibition will also include UK premieres of other hypnotic Ikeda artworks including: point of no return – an intense audio-visualisation that creates a virtual experience akin to entering a black hole; spectra III – a tunnel of strobe lighting that made its premiere at the 2019 Venice Biennale and has been readapted to reflect the scale of the 180 Studios show; and A (continuum) – a sound installation comprising six colossal Meyer SB-1 speakers that will act as minimalist sculptures.