Web-Like String Installations by Chiharu Shiota Hold Tension Between Absence and Existence



A profound sense of curiosity and a seek for solutions consumes Chiharu Shiota’s apply. The Osaka-born, Berlin-based artist is thought for her large installations that crisscross and intertwine string into mesh-like labyrinths. Concurrently dense in building and delicate and ethereal, the site-specific works depend on destructive area and a recurring theme of “absence in existence,” Shiota tells Louisiana Channel in a new interview.

Chronicling the artist’s evolution and surveying her works throughout a long time, the quick movie visits her Berlin studio, the place a suspended boat hangs from the ceiling and Shiota shares some childhood work. She describes the latter medium as limiting her expression, prompting  her first interactions with string and the idea of “drawing within the air.” The movie then follows Shiota to Cisternerne in Copenhagen, the place she weaves an online of white string throughout the pillars filling the eerie area for her ongoing A number of Realities exhibition, which is on view by way of November 30.

Shiota works with what she phrases “philosophies of the second,” creating sprawling installations designed to elicit visceral reactions from these of their presence. The colours are symbolic, with crimson conveying relationships between individuals, black the universe, and white the start and purity. “Strings break, get tangled or tied collectively—similar to individuals lower relationships, get tied collectively or tangled. It’s very a lot the identical,” she says.

Journey and being “on the transfer” are when she usually gathers concepts for works, which aren’t sketched earlier than she realizes them totally of their supposed area. When an exhibition closes, the strings are lower and discarded, additional embodying the conceptual features of her apply that meditates on life and loss of life. “What world will there be after your physique has disappeared? Once I die, and my ideas and concepts are gone… I ponder what is going to grow to be of me. I create my works looking for these solutions.”

Shiota has items on view in cities world wide for the time being, together with Paris, Essen, Germany, and Aomori, Japan, and you’ll see the total checklist on her site.

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