Sensory exhibitions and the art of perception: Ryoji Ikeda returns to ACC Gwangju

In a bold celebration of its 10th anniversary, the National Asian Culture Center (ACC) in Gwangju, South Korea, welcomes back Ryoji Ikeda—the Japanese maestro of sound and data aesthetics—for an exhibition that defines the boundaries of perception. Blending mathematics, information, and art, 2025 ACC Focus: Ryoji Ikeda invites audiences into one of the most groundbreaking sensory exhibitions of the year. Open through December 28th, this monumental showcase dives deep into the themes of existence in the digital age through immersive installations that provoke, envelop, and inspire.

Ryoji Ikeda’s Data Verse: a decade in reflection

The exhibition, which marks Ikeda’s return to ACC since his 2015 debut, is both a homecoming and a forward leap. A centerpiece of the show is the full presentation of data-verse 1/2/3, Ikeda’s landmark audiovisual trilogy, now installed across a 40-meter-long wall. Known globally for its integration of scientific datasets from NASA, CERN, and the Human Genome Project, Ryoji Ikeda’s Data Verse Trilogy translates the invisible into stunning streams of sound and vision. It’s a meditation on scale—from quantum particles to galaxies—and an invitation to rethink what it means to be alive in a world governed by algorithms.

Immersive digital art exhibition: from code to Cosmos

As part of the immersive digital art exhibition, ACC commissioned four new works, expanding Ikeda’s artistic lexicon. Among them, data.flux (n˚2) transforms the ceiling into a flowing river of genetic information. Projected through 10-meter LED panels, the artwork uses DNA sequences and geometric forms to provoke questions about the very building blocks of life.

Another highlight, critical mass, turns the floor into a dramatic landscape of contrast—projecting stark black-and-white patterns, accompanied by sonic intensities that challenge the senses. Ikeda continues to bend perception with sleeping beauty, a contemplative series of twelve works that are the only non-immersive pieces in the exhibition, offering a moment of pause and reflection amid the sensory storm.

This Ryoji Ikeda exhibition not only revisits his earlier masterpiece test pattern (n˚8), which opened the ACC a decade ago, but also showcases more recent works such as point of no return and exp #1. Through this evolving body of work, Ikeda pushes deeper into the philosophical terrain of data as beauty—transforming raw, incomprehensible information into art that resonates at a deeply human level.

By turning digital exhaust into poetry, Ikeda continues to challenge audiences to confront the relationship between humanity and the systems we’ve created. Through repetition, binary rhythms, and immersive scale, the exhibition positions him as not just an artist but a cartographer of the digital age.