The works of internationally renowned Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima will be on display at Santa Barbara Museum of Art Dec. 22-April 5, the artist’s first U.S. solo museum exhibition in more than 20 years.

Miyajima ingeniously transforms industrially produced technologies into vividly glowing sculptures that evoke infinite worlds of being, space, and time.

Miyajima’s work was last seen in a solo U.S. museum exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1997.

Throughout his career, Miyajima has used electronic light emitting diode (LED) numerals in various configurations. This absorbing presentation of four varied light-based works embodies Miyajima’s Buddhist practice and self-conceived philosophy: Keep Changing, Connect with Everything, Continue Forever.

Spanning two decades of the artist’s work, this powerful installation was designed by the artist for SBMA’s expansive Davidson Gallery. 

Seen one after the next, Miyajima’s silent works immerse viewers into a series of luminous and contemplative environments that rely on the anonymity of numbers to generate profoundly subjective experiences. 

Miyajima turns modern technologies into wondrous works of art with materials that play far different roles in our daily lives, imbuing electronics of the present with millennia-old philosophies surrounding the human body, mind, and spirit. 

Born in 1957 and receiving his degrees from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, Miyajima emerged in the late 1980s as one of the most important younger Japanese artists of his generation. 

Since then, Miyajima has exhibited his work around the world, including a 2019 solo exhibition at the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum; a solo exhibition at the Espoo Museum, Helsinki, until March 8, 2020; and in a group exhibition at Somerset House, London, until February 23, 2020. 

One-person exhibitions have also been held in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Berlin, London, Zürich, Rome, Fort Worth and Sydney, and Miyajima’s works are on permanent view at the Benesse Art Site Naoshima. 

Miyajima represented Japan at the 1999 Venice Biennale and his work is in major museum collections across the globe.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is one of the finest museums on the West Coast and is celebrated for the superb quality of its permanent collection. Its mission is to integrate art into the lives of people through internationally recognized exhibitions and special programs, as well as the thoughtful presentation of its permanent collection.

The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and admission is free on Thursday evenings, 5-8 p.m.