Everything Comes in Waves

Everything Comes in Waves 2011, installation view, Photography by Michael Heilgemeir

Continuing from his last exhibition, London based artist Kentaro Yamada investigates the aesthetics of nature and everyday life and presents a delicate and poetic exhibition. In a previous feature on Portable, he spoke about his life-like approach on art and his fascination for natural phenomena such as sunsets.

For his recent exhibition Behind the Object, a two person exhibition with Ronin Cho at La Scatola Gallery in London, Yamada presents a large scale light installation.

Light bulbs arranged on the gallery floor and connected to each other by black electrical cables. The bulbs pulsate in intervals, translating a human breathing pattern known as Cheyne-Stokes respiration into a motion of light. This abnormal breathing pattern occurs before one’s death. It is characterised by a period where respiration is temporarily suspended, followed by a cycle of deeper and faster breaths. Each time the breath is suspended, it is uncertain whether the cycle will continue or the subject has died.

Everything Comes in Waves 2011, installation view, Photography by Michael Heilgemeir

Light is used as a symbol for life to reflect on the artist’s personal experience. He took care of a beloved person in the last months before death and witnessed the gradual decay of the body. Despite the decay and change he was observing, he recalls that there was something essential about the person that remained constant. Yamada puts the spotlight on this extreme moment – moment so tragic, yet full of new perception and heightened awareness that it could even be suitable for comedy or satire.

Details

• Art by

  Kentaro Yamada