The Bass in Miami Beach has landed a first. Yuko Mohri: Unviolated Imperfection, which opened Sept. 17 at 2100 Collins Avenue, is the Tokyo-based artist's first solo exhibition in an American museum. It fills three galleries with machines that make music out of rotting fruit, dripping water and the sound of the ocean, and it runs through May 30, 2027.

Mohri builds kinetic installations out of everyday objects and lets forces like gravity, light, humidity and time do the composing. Nothing in the show plays the same way twice. That is the point, and it is why this is an exhibition worth visiting more than once over the season.

Three rooms, three ways of listening

Decomposition. The first gallery wires pieces of fruit with electrodes. As the fruit slowly breaks down, its changing electrical signals are translated into shifting pitches and patterns of light. It sounds strange on paper and is oddly calming in person: you are listening to a still life age.

Moré Moré (Leaky). The second room holds a new version of Mohri's best-known work, the installation she showed at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Water travels through a tangle of found objects, setting off chain reactions of sound and motion. It is the room most people will linger in.

Piano Solo. The third gallery centers on a grand piano that plays itself, paired with footage of the ocean. Environmental sounds are translated into notes on the keys, so the instrument is effectively performing the weather. In a museum a short walk from the ocean, it lands.

The title nods to Violated Perfection, a 1990 book by the architecture scholar Aaron Betsky. The idea running through all three rooms is that imperfection keeps a system alive and responsive, rather than being something to fix.

More to see at The Bass this fall

Mohri opened alongside Amalia Pica: Lecturas Posibles in the museum's Rotunda, an interactive space covered in chalkboard surfaces where visitors are invited to draw and write over the room. It is on view through Feb. 12, 2027, and it is a good reason to bring the kids. On Oct. 28, the art duo Pedro & Juana open Aquí, a floor-to-ceiling room of custom wallpaper, carpet, furniture and floral light fixtures meant to make you stay a while. In December, Susan Philipsz's sound installation Too Much I Once Lamented moves to Collins Park among the baobab trees.

The Mohri exhibition is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation New Media Initiative, according to The Bass.

How to go, and how to get in free

The Bass is open Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., and closed Monday and Tuesday. General admission is $15; seniors 65 and up, students and youth 7 to 18 pay $8; children under 6 and members get in free.

There are several ways in for nothing. Miami Beach and Surfside residents always get in free, as do active military, SNAP and EBT cardholders, visitors with disabilities and their caregivers. On the third Thursday of each month the museum stays open from 6 to 9 p.m. with free admission, and the last Sunday of every month is Family Day, with free entry and art activities for kids and caregivers.

Park at the Collins Park Parking Garage at 340 23rd Street, one block north of the museum. Then give the Mohri galleries time: stand still in each room for a few minutes, because the work changes as you watch. A Third Thursday visit, with the building quiet and the sun down, is the version of this show to aim for.