ART-REVIEW:Ryoji Ikeda-Continum

A unique and very special experience that stumps and surprises notably the French audience and in particular the older generations, is the surprise that feels the viewer with Ryoji Ikeda’s exhibition “Continum” at Centre George Pompidou. The viewer, before entering the exhibition area, is required to remove his shoes and move to a large dark room, where he meets a huge screen, just like a movie theater, but without seats. The bare feet, the contact with the floor, combined with the sound, resemble a call to meditation or to an interstellar journey through a post meditation music. The composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda is a prominent figure in Japanese electronic music, through his work he invites visitors to experience immersion in a world mingling sound, image, space, perceptive phenomena and mathematical equations. The exhibition unveils a new installation, where a black room and a white room divide the space into two opposing and complementary worlds. The first part of “Continum” is a large audiovisual installation where the artist makes a vertiginous mix of sound and visual data that are abstract, according to mathematical laws. This part, creates a series of unexplainable feelings to the viewer, urging him to spiritual liberation, but he cannot decode them because they cause him hesitations and questions that lead him to the next room to solve them. So from the supposed chaos and darkness, passes in the ultimate light, an installation where the white fitted carpet and a series of objects that a first look like a series of big Taiko’s (traditional Japanese religious instruments) but which in their contemporary form  are nothing more than hyper-directional loudspeakers. The visitor realizes that the sounds in the first room of the installation comes from them, this fact helps to perceive differently his experiences so far, since the image was leading by the visual illusion that clearly refers to Op-Art. The final conclusion is that “Continum” is a well Curated, very interesting and personal exhibition, perfectly suited to the space since the work is purely experiential, an excellent experience for those who find themselves in Paris this time (!)–Efi Michalarou

Info: Curator: Marcella Lista, Assistant Curator Jylie Champion Centre George Pompidou, Place Georges-Pompidou, Paris, Duration: 15/6-27/8/18, Days & Hours: Daily 11:00-21:00 (Thu 11:00-23:00 only exhibitions on level 6), www.centrepompidou.fr