Concrete Playground

There are two incarnations of Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: indoor and outdoor. Outdoors, he produces public art made of light and mathematics, inviting the public to touch, push and prod his work into being. Indoors, he keeps his vibe mixing the fingerprints of the crowd with the handiwork of the artist, but remixes it with even more personal moments taken from the visiting public. Taking from them fairytale things, like their shadows, their eyes or their heartbeat, he bargains their borrowings into art. It's this indoor version that Lozano-Hemmer is bringing to Sydney over the  summer, with Recorders.

The exhibition gives a taste of the artist's mash-up of technology, art and the audience itself, as well as a brief preview of the reconstructed MCA before the art-deco institution's interiors reopen in March. The core of Lozano-Hemmer's work are surprising moments you can touch — or that seek you out. His work is sometimes directly political, like his Voz Alta ('out loud') memorial to Mexico's 1968 massacre in Tlatelolco. But the main thing he wants is to build a brief connection with you through his art: all of you, one at a time.

Before the exhibition opens Rafael Lozano-Hemmer will be giving the 2011 Lloyd Rees Memorial Lecture at the Opera House on December 5 2011 ($15/10 + BF), 'Antimonuments and Subsculptures', focusing on his outdoor artwork. Image of Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Room by we make money not art.