CHIHARU SHIOTA
RAIN OF MEMORIES
curated by Olivier Varenne
Patricia Low Contemporary
Parkstrasse 3780 - Gstaad
26/12/2015 - 6/2/2016
Following Chiharu Shiota's much celebrated exhibition “The Key in the Hand” at the Japanese Pavilion earlier this year at the 56th Venice Biennale, Patricia Low Contemporary and curator Olivier Varenne are proud to present Rain of Memories in Gstaad. This solo exhibition coincides with the gallery’s tenth anniversary.
For this exhibition, Shiota has created a new on-site installation, also titled Rain of Memories, and exhibited along side this are sculptures, embroidered paintings and works on paper. The installation is a web of memories, complexly weaved with red string and intersected with keys hanging. The keys themselves, collected from people all around the world, are there to help us unlock these moments, to gain access into the haunting yet fascinating world of other people’s memories. Shiota is quickly becoming well known for her ability to immerse her audience within frozen moments of time.
For the artist, weaving the thread is a form of meditation and is symbolic of her own mind set. When troubled, the thread tangles more irregularly; it becomes hard to establish where memories begin and end, but when feeling balanced, the weavings become more regular and follow more distinct patterns. It is impossible not to feel the overwhelming presence of the artist within her work, and it is to the credit of Shiota’s sensibility that each and every viewer can experience this so personally.
The networks inherent to Shiota’s installations also take the form of more personal and small scale works; sculptures retaining objects as if in mid-air, or paintings where the red thread weaves its own way around the canvas. In the intricacy of these intimate works, one can still be moved by her powerful translation of complex moments in life and death.
Olivier Varenne, Co-Director of Exhibitions & Collections and International Curator at MONA in Tasmania, Australia, Co-founder of Collectionair.com and curator of this exhibition Rain of Memories, first discovered the work of Chiharu Shiota on a trip to Japan in 2007. He included her in the 3rd Moscow Biennale which he co-curated in 2009 and On and On at La Casa Encendida in Madrid in 2010 and then for a third time, in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) and Detached in 2011.
Other Chiharu Shiota’s Museum exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York (USA, 2003), National Museum of Art, Osaka (Japan, 2008), La Maison Rouge, Paris (France, 2011), Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Kagawa (Japan, 2012), Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, (Australia, 2013), The Museum of Art, Kochi (Japan, 2013), Freer and Sackler Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (USA, 2014) and Kunstsammlung Düsseldorf, K21, Düsseldorf (Germany, 2015), to mention a few.
She has participated in 56th Biennale di Venezia, Italy, 2015, Aichi Triennale, Japan, 2010, Gwangju Biennale, South Korea, 2006, Yokohama Triennale, Japan, 2001 among others. Shiota’s Oeuvre also includes stage design; she has collaborated with several theaters and operas such as Theater Kiel (Tristan und Isolde, 2014), at different places for the play Matsukaze, directed by Sasha Waltz (recently in Berlin).
Her works are included in the following collections: The Leopold Private Collection, Vienna (Austria), 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan), The Hoffmann Collection, Berlin (Germany), The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Japan).
Image: Chiharu Shiota, Red Line III, 2012.
RAIN OF MEMORIES
curated by Olivier Varenne
Patricia Low Contemporary
Parkstrasse 3780 - Gstaad
26/12/2015 - 6/2/2016
Following Chiharu Shiota's much celebrated exhibition “The Key in the Hand” at the Japanese Pavilion earlier this year at the 56th Venice Biennale, Patricia Low Contemporary and curator Olivier Varenne are proud to present Rain of Memories in Gstaad. This solo exhibition coincides with the gallery’s tenth anniversary.
For this exhibition, Shiota has created a new on-site installation, also titled Rain of Memories, and exhibited along side this are sculptures, embroidered paintings and works on paper. The installation is a web of memories, complexly weaved with red string and intersected with keys hanging. The keys themselves, collected from people all around the world, are there to help us unlock these moments, to gain access into the haunting yet fascinating world of other people’s memories. Shiota is quickly becoming well known for her ability to immerse her audience within frozen moments of time.
For the artist, weaving the thread is a form of meditation and is symbolic of her own mind set. When troubled, the thread tangles more irregularly; it becomes hard to establish where memories begin and end, but when feeling balanced, the weavings become more regular and follow more distinct patterns. It is impossible not to feel the overwhelming presence of the artist within her work, and it is to the credit of Shiota’s sensibility that each and every viewer can experience this so personally.
The networks inherent to Shiota’s installations also take the form of more personal and small scale works; sculptures retaining objects as if in mid-air, or paintings where the red thread weaves its own way around the canvas. In the intricacy of these intimate works, one can still be moved by her powerful translation of complex moments in life and death.
Olivier Varenne, Co-Director of Exhibitions & Collections and International Curator at MONA in Tasmania, Australia, Co-founder of Collectionair.com and curator of this exhibition Rain of Memories, first discovered the work of Chiharu Shiota on a trip to Japan in 2007. He included her in the 3rd Moscow Biennale which he co-curated in 2009 and On and On at La Casa Encendida in Madrid in 2010 and then for a third time, in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) and Detached in 2011.
Other Chiharu Shiota’s Museum exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York (USA, 2003), National Museum of Art, Osaka (Japan, 2008), La Maison Rouge, Paris (France, 2011), Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Kagawa (Japan, 2012), Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, (Australia, 2013), The Museum of Art, Kochi (Japan, 2013), Freer and Sackler Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (USA, 2014) and Kunstsammlung Düsseldorf, K21, Düsseldorf (Germany, 2015), to mention a few.
She has participated in 56th Biennale di Venezia, Italy, 2015, Aichi Triennale, Japan, 2010, Gwangju Biennale, South Korea, 2006, Yokohama Triennale, Japan, 2001 among others. Shiota’s Oeuvre also includes stage design; she has collaborated with several theaters and operas such as Theater Kiel (Tristan und Isolde, 2014), at different places for the play Matsukaze, directed by Sasha Waltz (recently in Berlin).
Her works are included in the following collections: The Leopold Private Collection, Vienna (Austria), 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan), The Hoffmann Collection, Berlin (Germany), The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Japan).
Image: Chiharu Shiota, Red Line III, 2012.
