Counter Spiral No. 7

Being one of Japan’s preeminent avart-garde installation artists and conceptual sculptors, Tatsuo Miyajima fuses technology with a Buddhist's appreciation for time, existence and the mutability of experience. He uses advanced technology and mathematics to convey universal concerns over life, death, and the passage of time. Digital light-emitting diode (LED) counters with electric circuits, or ‘gadgets’ as he calls them, have been frequently used in his work since the late 1980s. In Counter Spiral No. 7 (Lot 310), sequential numbers flash and dance in perpetual cycles of 1 through 9. The number zero looms over the piece by way of its absence, and the viewer is drawn into the mesmerizing loop, marked by the dramatic tension of that which never appears. Miyajima himself is a Buddhist, and "zero", or nothingness (in the Buddhist ideology “no thing”), is not something that can be represented but something which must be perceived. Miyajima's works then manage to embody the profound dualities of existence. The spiral form of this work signifies the continuity, connection and eternity, also suggesting the flow and span of time space. It inevitably propel audience to contemplate on the universe and human spirit.