Chiharu Shiota
Inner Universe
This summer, Galerie Templon will be filled with the spectacular woven work of Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. One onsite installation and a series of new sculptures explore the “Inner Universe” that some may see as the mind, others as consciousness, and which transcends the body, connecting beings to each other.
Inner Universe opens with a series of her signature sculptures of red, white and black threads. The mysterious boxes deconstruct our conception of the body: levitating clothes, anatomy books, personal belongings. As if crystallized in these tight weavings, they bear witness to everyday life while raising universal, metaphysical questions. As the artist explains: “the thread separates us from this physical presence within the object, but at the same time, this structure allows me to create a new space. Piling up layer after layer of cut, tangled and knotted thread creates the entirety of the universe bound to this frame.”
This palpable detachment from earthly life is countered by a new set of sculptures made of imperishable materials. Blown-glass Cells suggest almost abstract forms of cells and organs bursting with life, while the In the Hand bronzes, moulds of her own hands, seem to bring the material alive. On the walls, her woven Skin canvases cover the space with skin that is both microscopic and cosmic.
The artist
Born in 1972 in the Japanese city of Osaka, Chiharu Shiota has been living and working in Berlin since 1997. Using woven yarn, the artist combines performance, body art and installations in a process that places at its center the body. Her protean artistic approach plays with the notions of temporality, movement and dreams, and demands a dual engagement from the viewer, both physical and emotional. In recent years, Chiharu Shiota has been widely exhibited around the world, including at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2003), the New Museum of Jakarta and the SCAD Museum of Art, USA (2017), the K21 Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf (2014), the Smithsonian, Washington DC (2014) and Japan’s Kochi Museum of Art (2013). In 2015 Chiharu Shiota represented Japan at the Venice Biennale with her installation The Key in the Hand. In 2018, she is exhibiting at the Museum of Kyoto; and in 2019 she exhibited at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo throught a exhibition illuminating the artist's entire works.
