Yokohama, Japan ? Commercialism has been good to Hiro Yamagata.

At 55, he is one of the most commercially successful artists alive today, with his brightly colored and infectiously upbeat work — mass-produced on posters, jigsaw puzzles and prints. His work, much of which is sold at shopping malls, generates an estimated $4 billion in sales a year.

But Yamagata, it would seem, has seen the light.

What he’s doing now isn’t about money, he says. And it’s far harder to hang on the wall.

“That’s nice, isn’t it,” the Japan-born, Los Angeles-based artist said as he looked out at a shimmering spectrum of greens and reds reflected across Yokohama’s waterfront from his latest work — two building-sized cubes covered with holographic Mylar panels.

Nearby, he has fitted out a pair of large rooms with lasers, strobes, 1,800 reflective cubes hanging on wires and all sorts of other devices to create an effect that is something like a kaleidoscope on steroids, or what a disco might look like several hundred years from now.

“For me, laser beams are like a paintbrush and mylar like the canvas,” he said. “Of course, I paint and sculpt, too. But this is something for the new age, the new generation, something we’ve never had before.”

In an effort to share his passion for light, Yamagata has lighted the Los Angeles River in lasers and dazzled viewers with rooms so full of dancing photons they require disclaimers warning the weak of heart to stay away.

This spring, he took over the skies of St. Petersburg as the Russian city marked its 300th anniversary with a gala celebration. Then he’s going to work on a laser opera in New York. To deepen his insights, he’s also doing research on particle physics at Stanford University.

Hiro Yamagata, who has been described as the most commercially successful artist alive today, shows a shimmering spectrum of greens and reds reflected across Yokohama's waterfront, south of Tokyo. The Japan-born, Los Angeles-based artist said, Thats nice, isnt

“When I was a kid, I spent most of my time stargazing, or studying physics,” he said. “I made lots of things with neon, and thousands of spaceships. That’s my background. I was like the mechanical boy.”

Yamagata was born in 1948 near the city of Kyoto. He moved to Paris in 1972 to study at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts and then to Los Angeles six years later. In 1988, he painted the commemorative poster for the 100th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower.

Innovative, avant-garde work is not how Yamagata made his name.

“For 12 years, I shut my mouth and did just 100 percent commercial artwork. Just paint it and sell it,” he said. “I got a lot of gain financially from that.”

Yamagata said he deliberately focused on making money — though he says most of the profits went to middlemen and he has little personal wealth — so that he could fund his experiments with the expensive materials needed to create the art of light.

He said he doesn’t expend much energy worrying about critics who say he sold out, but acknowledged it was a hard label to shake off.

“Facts are facts,” he shrugged. “I really appreciate the people who got my work. I am thankful for that. I’m touched. But I had a really hard time with the critics and the museums when I tried to come back. They said I forgot about art, I was commercial.”

Now, however, his project list is anything but conventional — and not very likely to make him much money.

In a bit of a departure from his focus on light, he is planning a show using sound frequencies that can be felt by the body but are too high or low for the human ear to discern, and another in which gallery visitors actually climb into his work — sleep capsules — and nap for a few hours.

“It’s almost like medical research,” he said.

Yamagata said that because his light creations are so expensive, he continues to spend much of his time wooing sponsors. The “Solar Cube” project and its nearby light-show rooms in this city just south of Tokyo, for example, cost $2 million.

But unlike the countless jigsaw puzzles that bear his name, this work will never be tucked away somewhere to collect dust.

“When the exhibition period is over, we’ll destroy it,” he said. “It will be dumped. That’s the way it is.

“We’ll make something somewhere else.”