Ryoji Ikeda opens his largest exhibition in Korea in Jeju: 100,000 genomes transformed into light and sound

The Japanese audiovisual artist Ryoji Ikeda, who works between France and Japan, opened on Thursday, September 24, 2026, his largest-ever solo exhibition in Korea — at the alternative space House of Refuge on Jeju Island, South Korea. The exhibition will remain open to the public until January 18, 2027.

The exhibition is housed in a concrete building abandoned for more than 20 years, restored especially for this occasion (735 Haso-ro, Aewol-eup, Jeju). Inside are large-scale sensory installations, including three new works and two new versions making their world premiere.

The highlight of the exhibition is “The Critical Paths”, a collaboration with the Estonian Genome Centre at the University of Tartu: genomic data from 100,000 people is transformed into light and sound, while suspended LED screens and floor-to-ceiling mirrors create an endless corridor of data.

In the completely dark gallery, “the irreducible” displays millions of digits on a massive LED screen, stretched endlessly through mirrors underfoot — what Ikeda calls “the mathematical sublime”, something the human eye and brain can never fully process. Alongside it come “the irreducible [nº13]” — more than a million digits printed on 35mm film inside a lightbox that looks like a still image — and “Spin”, an ultra-precise laser spinning at high speed that creates the illusion of a three-dimensional structure. Together, the works reveal the limits of human perception in a data-driven society.

The opening was marked by a rare live performance by Ikeda himself: the artist operated 10 turntables simultaneously — the first time he has done so in nearly 20 years — with mechanical sounds and high frequencies colliding at random.

The exhibition is open daily from 10:00 to 19:00 (last entry at 18:00); tickets cost 23,000 Korean won.

Photo: Ryoji Ikeda’s audiovisual installation ‘test pattern [no.5]’ (CC BY-SA 3.0 — Zan Wimberley, via Wikimedia Commons).