
Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.
Ryoji Ikeda’s work point of no return (2018) consists of a wall module with two light projections. One side of the wall shows a constant white circle, cast by a powerful theatre light. The other side of the wall functions as a screen for a video projection, showing an abstract visual of a pulsating black circle. The video is continuously generated by a software and its pattern never repeats itself. The spatial conflation of two luminous opposites creates a destabilizing and immersive physical effect. The work’s title borrows from an astrophysics’ term that defines the point at the event horizon of a black hole, where materials can no longer escape the hole’s gravitation force.
One of Japan’s leading visual artists and composers, Ryoji Ikeda is celebrated for his immersive audiovisual installations and performances that use projections to visualise the translation of data into sound and vice versa. Ikeda’s works frequently materialise as audiovisual installations or performances where visitors are invited to step inside and play among shadows and pulsating patterns, losing themselves in the hypnotic environments.
Esther Schipper founded the gallery in 1989 in Cologne. In 1997 the gallery relocated to Berlin. Through more than three decades of continuous exhibition practice, the gallery has established itself as a major force not only in Germany but in an international context, with offices in Paris and Seoul and representatives in France, Spain, the United States, Latin America, South Korea, Taiwan and China. The gallery holds up to ten gallery exhibitions as well as multiple off-site projects each year and participates in leading art fairs across the globe.

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