LOS ANGELES, CA.- Kayne Griffin Corcoran is presenting works from Mika Tajima’s Negative Entropy series as part of cycle 2 of Gallery Platform from Aug 13 - 19, 2020.




Tajima’s research-based practice explores the technologies and ideologies that cultivate the subtle molding of human behavior through aesthetic conditioning. She analyzes the amorphous zones that intersect productivity and leisure, examining how human behavior and emotional experiences have transformed within the long sweep of capitalist development.

Negative Entropy is a series of abstract Jacquard woven acoustic portraits of industrial and information production. The subject of these portraits have been factories that employ industrial textile Jacquard looms (precursors to digital technology), facilities that comprise the infrastructure of the information economy, and other new types of “energy” production sites. These works are simultaneously images and material records of their own making. Field recordings of production sounds were made at each site, then transmuted into digital spectrogram images using a linguistic audio software. Color was assigned to the wave forms, then translated into a pattern by a weaving technician to create a Jacquard fabric.

The title of this series is taken from a term used in quantum physics, and describes the reversal of entropy (disorder or randomness), by which chaotic information is measured and systematized. Negative Entropy, like many of the artist’s recent projects, speaks to the difficulty in calibrating the qualities in life itself, especially in measuring such abstract properties as language and emotion.