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Exhibition

New Work

Miyajima
October 10, 1997–January 27, 1998

The multiple counters click glowing red figures from one to nine at varying rates, go dark briefly, and then start counting again in a media art installation by Tatsuo Miyajima. The SFMOMA-commissioned installation, entitled Counter Line (1996-97) and site-specific to the Museum, grapples with the complexity and instability of time, a concept thought to be a stable, straight line throughout much of Western philosophical and scientific history. In Counter Line, as in his other works, Miyajima disrupts the notion of time as a linear, universal truth and replaces it with a recognition of the arbitrary, fluid nature of time.

No brochure was produced for this exhibition.

Learn more about the New Work series.

Tatsuo Miyajima is one of three exhibitions in the 1997-98 New Work series supported by the Collectors Forum of the SFMOMA.

Tatsuo Miyajima, Counter Line Number 2, 1989; collection Gallery Buchman, photo: Mitsuhiko Suzuki