star light and sound art duo NONOTAK prepare for first London solo show

NONOTAK, the cutting-edge light and sound art duo made up of artists Noemi Schipfer and Takami Nakamoto, open ECLIPSE, their first solo London show, on 30 August. The exhibition has been created in collaboration with Lumen Studios, a consultancy and curatorial team that creates digital art and interactive installations for artists around the world.

ECLIPSE—which will be shown at 47 Tanner Street, an events space in a 19th-century former leather tannery in Bermondsey, south London, immediately to the south of Tate Modern— consists of three light and sound installations: HIGHWAY (2022), DUAL (2024) and HIDDEN SHADOWS (2024). The latter two are new and site-specific. The duo will also present live performances on 5, 6 and 7 September.

Paris-based NONOTAK are known around the world for using kinetic visuals, projection mapping, and choreographed sound to create a distinctive style of rhythmic, highly kinetic, immersive light and sound experiences. Beguilingly smooth visual and audio transitions are aesthetically inspired by minimalist architecture and optical art.

The duo have worked together since 2011 and regularly present their work at festivals and fairs around the world. This includes at multiple iterations of the Mutek festival of digital art and electronic music over the past 10 years, as well as Mutek’s home base in Montreal, and at the festival’s global iterations in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Tokyo.

The pair previously exhibited at the first Day for Night festival in Houston in 2015, Art Basel Miami Beach in 2018, the Artechouse space in Washington DC, and at several Wonderspaces venues in the United States. They launched the world premiere of their work HORIZON at Tate Britain in 2015. At present, NONOTAK have two works—HIGHWAY and DAYDREAM V.6 (2021)—on show at Cineum Cannes, in the south of France. Both works serve as immersive introductions for audiences to enjoy before films shown at Cineum, including in its large-scale Imax room.

“We are honoured to present our first solo exhibition in London and we’re excited to include two new pieces for it,” NONOTAK tell The Art Newspaper. “We want people to feel the power of light combined with sound and space and create a journey out of it.

“Light, considered by us as a matter we sculpt, will express itself in its different forms throughout three installations curated for this experience.”

Lumen Studios has a global network of over 400 artists, and curates exhibitions, commissions, and events for art venues, cultural institutions, and public spaces around the world. Previous exhibitions presented by Lumen Studios include Re.Memory (2020), with the artists Refik Anadol and Sougwen Chung. The prestigious Lumen Prize, now in its 13th year, has supported over 600 artists, finalists and winners, who work at the innovative end of their creative fields.

“From a Lumen perspective, this NONOTAK exhibition represents a huge opportunity to help artists who use technology as their canvas expand their audience reach,” Lumen Studios tells The Art Newspaper. “We want to demonstrate it is possible to use exhibitions as a platform to drive awareness of digital art and to scale our non-profit organisation, which is focused on the acceleration of art and technology.”

NONOTAK, ECLIPSE, 47 Tanner Street, London, SE1 3PL, 30 August—8 December. Live performances 5-7 September.