Installation view: “Bagus Pandega: Daya Benda” at the Swiss Institute in New York City. Photo: Daniel Pérez

Known for large-scale, technology-driven installations that combine everyday objects, electronics, sound and elements of the natural world, Indonesian artist Bagus Pandega explores the parallels between the mechanics of organic life and human technology. His practice centers on experimenting with hybrid ecosystems built from speakers, sensors, lighting components, circuit boards and plants—assemblages that come to life, move, respond or produce sound when activated by viewers, setting in motion a circulation of resources and energies between organic and technological processes.

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For his first institutional debut in New York, “Daya Benda,” on view at the Swiss Institute through January 4, 2026, Pandega presents three ambitious installations that examine the interdependence inherent in the use of natural resources, transforming the space into a complex living laboratory where these hybrid collaborative systems between human and organic unfold before visitors’ eyes.

The heart of the show, encountered immediately upon entry, is Hyperpnea Green (2024), a large suspended mechanical sculpture composed of concentric rings lined with clear vessels containing Indonesian minerals, common American houseplants, lights and a music box. All components are wired into a single system connected to an oxygen machine and a biofeedback mechanism that responds to the metabolic signals of both plants and people. As viewers exhale carbon dioxide, the installation releases oxygen into the space. Borrowing its title from the medical term describing rapid or deep breathing to meet increased oxygen demand, the work becomes a live experience of the unequal distribution and extraction of one of the planet’s most precious elements: oxygen. Through this circle, Pandega reveals our dependency on the natural world—one we simultaneously deplete through unstable consumption—while illuminating the interdependence between organic and artificial systems. By embedding viewers within these feedback loops of electricity, breath and movement, Pandega foregrounds relations shaped by cycles of life, extraction and reciprocity.

He began developing his own oxygen-concentrator machine during the COVID pandemic, initially as a civilian tool for personal survival. “In Indonesia, my family and I had to wait in extremely long lines just to get oxygen, and I didn’t want to take that risk. So I began researching and building several oxygen machines myself,” he recalls. The model now integrated into Hyperpnea Green is the most efficient one he created at that time, approaching medical-grade functionality.

Pandega’s background is in sculpture—he graduated from Institut Teknologi Bandung with a BA in fine art. After school, however, he moved away from traditional sculptural practice and began........

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