Works that bring about phenomena that make us feel the invisible

Japanese artist Shimizu Jio's solo exhibition "window" is now on view at Misa Shin Gallery in Tokyo. This is the third solo exhibition of Shimizu Jio, who was born in 1966 and lives and works in Hiroshima and Saitama.

Shimizu creates experimental works that explore the relationship between art and natural science. His works create phenomena composed of elements such as sound, movement, light, and vibration.

In this exhibition, we will focus on Shimizu's work " window" among several other works . When a tweet containing the words "light" and "dark" in seven different languages appears, two luminous panels flash on and off. Which panel do you expect to see more flickers of light? Which language do you think will show up better on your monitor? What are your reasons for thinking so? Asking yourself these questions and forming your own hypothesis before viewing the work will help you feel more comfortable with the exhibit.

On the practical side, it is based on Big Data and Tweeter, but also influenced by Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, which depicts heaven and hell between the human worlds. As in "The Garden of Delight", one may notice that the left side of the "window" refers to "light", the right side to "darkness" as hell, and the center suggests the emptiness corresponding to the monitored and foolish human world.

In addition to "window", Shimizu Jio will also present "decay music ", a collaborative work with Hiroyuki Iida. decay music" is a mixed-media installation that uses scintillators installed in a room to detect gamma radiation and play back the sound of radiation in response. In "decay music," gamma rays are detected by scintillators installed in the room, and the sound of the radiation emitted in the Misashin Gallery during the exhibition is played back. The artist has yet to perform "decay music" in highly radioactive places such as Fukushima or Chernobyl, but of course such cities would produce high-pitched sounds due to their high energy levels. In this respect, this work has the potential to produce a variety of sounds depending on the radiation level, and it is hoped that we will soon see "decay music" in the next place somewhere.

In those time-based works, a phenomenon occurs. It is not a matter of transforming the invisible into the visible. From the phenomena brought about by the works, we can feel the invisible. Jio Shimizu's "windows" exhibition started on June 28 and will be held at Misashin Gallery until August 10, 2019.

Article written by: Jeongeun Jo
Born in Korea, lives in Japan. She is one of the members of TRiCERA who graduated from the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. She is also active as an artist.