hiro yamagata

New York Ace Gallery Installation, Hiro Yamagata (2001)

Hiro Yamagata creates artworks that are simultaneously high tech and elemental, theoretical and visceral, abstract and immersive. He explores the links between science and art, micro and macro phenomenon, and geography, ecology, technology and cultural memory. Yamagata has particularly explored the inexplicable forces of the sun, and its effects on one's environment for over a decade. By working with artificial, man-made beams generated by lasers and other advanced lighting systems (including fiber optic beams, color rays and Intelbeams), he believes "we can better recognize those elements of the sun which we would not otherwise perceive, or attempt to understand."

 

The unifying element is the refractive holographic panels covering all surfaces of the gallery walls, floor, and ceiling. These multiple refractive surfaces disperse and transform white laser beams into scattered spectrums of color. In addition, most of the rooms are filled with hundreds of spinning, mirrored cubes suspended from the ceiling. The laser/lighting systems are run by an intricate series of computer programs designed to generate various rays of light, which travel across and between various galleries, bouncing and refracting off of mirrors and holograms. The viewer is immersed in a vast display of ever-changing lights, unlike any natural phenomenon but perhaps indicative of it. While the lasers emphasize the technological potential of light, commonplace light sources, such as mirrors or floodlights, represent an anchor to reality, albeit with its constantly changing impressions.