At Red Hook's Pioneer Works, Tuomas A. Laitinen Turns Octopus Skin Into an Immersive Landscape

Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, is showing Siphon, a solo exhibition by Helsinki-based artist Tuomas A. Laitinen, through November 22, 2026. The multimedia installation grows out of more than a decade of research into octopus intelligence, sleep and consciousness. It is curated by Gabriel Florenz.

The centerpiece is a multichannel video that surrounds viewers with the shifting camouflage patterns, skin textures and colors of octopuses. Made in collaboration with neuroscientist Sam Reiter of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), it combines original footage with OIST recordings of octopus sleep. Scaled up and edited into one continuous landscape, several animal bodies merge into a single undulating, painterly terrain. Laitinen says the piece is meant to be felt in the body, not just seen.

At the heart of the show, water-filled tanks hold tubular blown-glass sculptures that the artist conceived as speculative proposals for octopuses. Kosen Ohtsubo, an 86-year-old Japanese ikebana master, activates them with site-specific arrangements. Active for more than six decades and based at his Flower Planet studio in Saitama, Ohtsubo often works with vegetables and discarded objects and draws on his love of jazz improvisation.

Beyond the gallery, a spatial audio work called 8Eternal fills the three-story Main Hall. Inspired by an octopus's eight arms, it features vocals by Kenyan composer Nyokabi Kariuki and is built on an eight-note "octachord." Eight ultrasonic speakers send out tightly focused beams of sound, so visitors catch fragments of the composition that appear and fade as they move.

The project began with Laitinen's study of copper's mythology and geopolitics, which led him to the octopus's copper-based blood and then to researchers in Okinawa. The footage was refined during his 2024 residency at Pioneer Works.

The exhibition is closed on November 5 and November 19 for other programming.